One Last Goodbye: Through the Night
by BatmanLoonaticsFan96
Summary: Two months after the events of "One Last Goodbye: Even When I'm Broken," old enemies return, forcing the Normandy crew to reunite one more time. Can the aid of a new friend help them finish this battle...or will it end up as their last?
1. Chapter 1

One Last Goodbye: Through the Night

Yay, I'm back! So, I kept rereading my first Mass Effect fic, "One Last Goodbye," and the two-part epilogue I posted for it, "One Last Goodbye: Even When I'm Broken," and I kept thinking "well, I wish I'd done this" or "if I kept going, I could've done this" and I finally decided "Why don't I keep going?" So, here's a sequel! Sorry the summary's vague, but I didn't want to give away anything about the story overall or the first two, which form the basis of this entire plot, so summarizing it was difficult. On that note, if you have not put this together yet, I STRONGLY recommend reading the first two before touching this one at all.

Note: this one is rated T not just for the action sequences but for implied... _activity_ , descriptive lead-ins, and some jokes about it, which is also the main reason I had to change the rating on the first story from K+ to T. Just so you're aware. (Probably doesn't matter since the game itself is rated M, but still.)

For theme songs, I would suggest "Your Guardian Angel" by Abandon All Ships, "Love You Like I'm Gonna Lose You" by Meghan Trainor and John Legend, "Unbreakable" by Fireflight, "My Freedom" by Two Steps from Hell ft. Merethe Soltvedt, or "Stand By You" by Rachel Platten.

Now that I've said all that, here we go...

Chapter 1 – Shepard

 _I lean against the railing around the galaxy map, looking down at the illuminated display of the celestial spiral housing all known life. Life that is currently threatened by an ancient race that has already claimed countless lives…too many of which were friends. Things seem quiet at the moment. Too quiet for these circumstances. I can't shake the feeling that something's wrong. Very, very wrong. But I don't know what._

"Shepard," EDI, our trusty AI, comes over the intercom to talk to me, "I am picking up a distress call on the surface of Lusia."

 _I look over at the galaxy map as it zooms through the Athena Nebula to the asari colony in question. "What's down there?"_

"Unknown. But the signal is coming from Reaper-controlled territory."

 _Reapers. The synthetic monsters fighting to destroy us all. It seems my sole purpose these days is keeping them from succeeding. One distress call might not seem like a high priority, but I'm not going to just pass by when we're so close. "Alright. Activate the stealth drive and tell Tali and Liara to get ready. We're going in." Once EDI has confirmed the order, I step back from the map, prepared to turn to the elevator and head down to the armory._

 _Someone stops me first, wrapping their arms around my waist. "What, you're not taking me?" Garrus._

 _I smile, my dark thoughts thrown away by the sound of his voice. "Shouldn't you be in the med bay?" For a split second, I remember the sight of him on Thessia, limping to the extraction site and clutching his side to make sure his wounds didn't start bleeding. Just thinking about it makes me worry again._

 _Then he brings me to lean against him, as strong as ever, the warmth of our contact chasing away my worries completely. "You know it takes more than a gunship attack to keep me down."_

 _I let off a laugh. "Got me there." Slowly, I turn my gaze up to him and find myself lost in his dark blue eyes. No movement crosses my mind, so I have no idea how my hand ends up pressed against his scars. Of course, I'm still not considering changing positions when we end up tied to each other again. As if I could care less whether we're kissing in the CIC—it's certainly not the first time and the crew has stopped paying attention (although Traynor still tosses a few smiles my way about it). When I finally pull away, though, EDI steps back in just long enough to say that Tali and Liara are already waiting in the armory and I wonder how long we've been standing here like this. I sigh. "Don't worry. I'll be back before you know it." Then I pull away, holding to his hand as long as I can, and step over to the elevator. As the doors close to take me down to deck 5, I catch one last sight of him and smile._

 _In five minutes, Tali, Liara, and I are in the shuttle on the way to the LZ. I spend half that time checking my weapons to make sure we're ready for anything. When we finally step out of the Kodiak and onto the planet's surface, though…that's when things start to go wrong. The signal's coming from inside a locked-down facility. I send Tali ahead to get the door._

 _"Looks like someone hid in here after the Reapers arrived," Tali explains as she hacks into the locks, "The distress call implies they wouldn't be able to stay hidden much longer. Maybe—" Then the door actually opens and Tali freezes in shock. "…Keelah…"_

 _I quickly look to see what the problem is, Liara following. We both freeze with her when we see._

 _The main hall is littered with the corpses of Reaper ground troops, most of which have been expertly killed with what I'd say are knives or omni-blades._

 _"Something's not right here," I say. I scan the area. Three paths are laid out and there's no sign of life in any direction. "Which way is the signal coming from?"_

 _Liara checks her omni-tool to see. "It's at the center of the complex. Any of these paths could lead to it."_

 _I groan as I realize we have to do the one thing I swore I'd_ never _do. "We have to split up. I'll head down the main hall, you two take the side ways. Let's go." I head out. It's almost an hour later before I find anything. After checking every room I come across, I find a central control room. At the center of the room is the distress signal transponder. I step over and check it. "Hello?" There's no one here. Now I know something's not right. I turn off the transponder and toss it aside before turning on my COMM. "Liara, Tali, it's Shepard. I found the signal, but there's no one here. Tell me you found something." No answer comes. "Tali! Liara!" Still nothing. I start trying to connect to the main frequency and contact EDI. "_ Normandy _, do you copy?"_

 _"Don't bother."_

 _I quickly turn around, holding my gun at the ready._

 _A dark-haired human man stands by the main door. "The transponder was hacking your systems the whole time. Before you turned it off, it cut off your COMMs."_

 _"You have five seconds to tell me who you are and what's going on," I growl, both hands tight against my pistol._

 _"Direct as ever. My name is Killian Orion. And you have something I want."_

 _"Why go to all this trouble instead of just asking for it?"_

 _"Because anyone who knows the least about you knows you'd never have agreed." As he says so, he starts walking across the room, no longer paying attention to my aim following his every step. "Although you of all people should understand why I'm proposing it. Think back to Eden Prime. If the Council had listened to you then, maybe we wouldn't be in this hopeless war now. I'd say it's time for a change of pace. Don't you?"_

 _"What are you getting at? Other than that you're completely insane."_

 _"Call it an insurgency. With you as my top agent. As a Spectre, you should appreciate the title, at least."_

 _"You want to try your hand at what Cerberus failed and you want_ me _to help you?! Give me one good reason I shouldn't shoot you right now!"_

 _He smirks as he stops moving. "Alright. Just remember you asked for it." He then tosses something over to my feet._

 _I make the mistake of looking to see what it is. The moment I do, I drop my gun. …it's Tali's mask._

 _"Come to think of it, have you ever actually seen her without it on? She's beautiful."_

 _Cautiously, I pick up the screen that sustained one of my closest friends for most of her life, kept her from dying for so long—_

 _"Don't worry," Orion sighs, "She's not gonna die from open-air exposure. Not yet, anyway. She was already confined to her personal quarters on the_ Normandy _when we took it off."_

 _The_ Normandy _. Slowly, my gaze turns back to him as I realize what he's saying._

 _"Yeah. Remember what I said about that transponder hacking your systems? It connected to the AI core. By the time your 'Enhanced Defense Intelligence' caught on, we already had control of the primary systems. I could completely disable life support right now if I wanted to…" Moving as if to prove it, he activates his omni-tool and calls up the—_

 _Without thinking, I dive to grab my gun back and aim it at him again. "Try it and you'll be dying slowly!"_

 _"Or we could avoid attempting to shoot each other away from the command signal entirely and you could go along with my plan so that your crew lives to see another day."_

 _"If you think I'm going to stand back and watch you go after the Council—!"_

 _"Oh, I don't. I think you're going to stand back and watch me and my army of assassins take out every officer left in C-Sec while_ you _kill the Council…or you can stand back and watch everyone you've ever loved die."_

… _he has me cornered. If I say "no," he'll send the signal, and Garrus and Tali and Liara and everyone on the ship will die. If I shoot him now, the assassins he says he has onboard the ship will make the move instead. If I go along with the plan, it'll buy me a few hours in which my options will likely be the same; then I'll be forced to stay the course and eventually face the biggest treason charge since Saren helped Sovereign attack. I can't win this one. There's no way I'm walking out of it. All I can do is ensure that—he's right about this one—the only people I've ever cared about don't die because of me._

 _After I've been silent for 15 seconds, thinking this over without letting my aim shift at all, he prepares to send the signal. "I take it that's a 'no'?"_

 _"WAIT!" I instantly call, lowering my pistol._

 _He stays still, looking at me in anticipation, his hand still in place to decide if the closest thing I've ever had to family lives or dies._

 _Finally, I turn my gaze down to the floor as my weapon falls to it. "…I'll do it."_

 _The sight of his shadowy eyes gleaming sinisterly to me drowns out the next few hours. This must be what it was like when Thane drifted into a "battle-sleep"—one minute facing down the threat, the next waking to find your appointed targets savagely gunned down. When I do "wake up," I instantly drop my gun again, falling to my knees with it. When I stop gasping for breath, my vision darkened by it all, I feel a liquid fire against my left hand and turn to see green, blue, and purple blood pooling against it. The blood of the same people whose lives I saved twice before only to deal the final blow myself. I'm no savior of the galaxy. Not anymore._

 _"Maybe I was right. Maybe you wanted this all along, too."_

 _It takes all the strength I have left not to turn to what is now my least favorite person in the entire galaxy and strangle him. Of course, to be fair, I don't have much strength left. "I did what you wanted. Now it's your turn."_

 _He sighs. "Alright." He calls up his connection to the_ Normandy _again and—_

"Life support disabled."

 _At those words, the strength I thought I'd lost comes back, sending me leaping to my feet and turning to face him down. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"_

 _"I never actually said I'd let them go if you helped me," he smirks viciously._

 _Then I follow through on the rest of my plan. I grab him and pin him to the nearest wall, attempting to strangle him. While I have him, I reach for his omni-tool, which is now reporting that the crew only has a few minutes of oxygen remaining, and move to counteract his last command. Before I can accomplish either, his assassins come up behind me and pull me back. I try to fight them off to no avail. Finally, they have me pinned down._

 _Orion glares at me furiously as he catches his breath. "You lived up to my expectations, I'll give you that." As he says so, he pulls out his own gun and readies it to fire. "But there's no place for a Spectre here anymore. Sorry, Commander, but I'm afraid our business has concluded. Thanks for the effort, though."_

… _I failed…I failed… The thought rings through my mind 1000 times in the space of a few seconds, drawing me to turn away from the weapon deciding my fate instead of facing it down like I always thought I would. At least, if I failed my so-called family, I'm going with them._

 _Then Orion lines up his shot at me. And pulls the trigger._

And I wake up. For a moment, my thoughts are spinning, believing what I just witnessed was reality and wondering how I could possibly still be alive. Then my senses clear and I see that I'm back in the _Normandy_ captain's cabin, lying in my bed like any other night. With a sigh, I bring myself to sit up and at least attempt to catch my breath and piece my true memory back together before—

Suddenly, a mechanical signal flashes across my vision. I clutch my head briefly. At least the pain has died down in recent months and what was once relative to a seizure is more along the lines of a migraine. But the psychological effects of the signal are still there. Because this signal proves I was once connected to the Reapers, the very monsters I fought so hard to destroy. I've given up any guilt I might've had for my actions a long time ago; there was no other way to save the galaxy and everyone in it besides destroying all synthetic life and I was never going to make that choice when I knew it would kill EDI and so absolutely dishonor Legion. Still, knowing that I used those genocidal robots in any capacity…

"…Sara?"

I know that voice better than any other. It's the only one that calls me by my first name. I turn to face it, coming face to face with the one person in the galaxy I hold closest to my heart.

Garrus pulls himself up to me, his dark blue eyes, a normally piercing gaze, softened by both exhaustion and concern. "Are you OK?"

I offer up a small smile, one that becomes genuine as I take his hand. "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

He's apprehensive at first. Then I lay down beside him and he smiles as he follows. He holds tight to my hand as I lay against him, his free hand pressed to my back. He always does this. It's like he can't go to sleep unless he feels my heartbeat. The thought of it makes me keep up that light smile as I close my eyes. After lying there for about five minutes with no change, though, I realize I'm not gonna be sleeping anymore tonight and lean back to look at Garrus. He actually managed to fall asleep. I smile again before wiggling out of his grasp as gently as I can so I don't wake him up.

Pushing the covers aside as little as I can, I pull my feet out and stand up. For about ten seconds, I enjoy the feeling of the metal floor against my bare feet. It's cold. Cold chases away fatigue and the last thing I want right now is to fall asleep again. I haven't been able to go to sleep one night in the past two months without facing nightmares like what I just woke up from. Garrus knows, of course. Just like he knows that I can't get any sleep at all without suffering some kind of damage unless he's there beside me. But he probably thinks my nightmares are still consisting of the months of torture I went through after coming back from my time controlling the Reapers. He doesn't know it's gotten worse.

So much worse…

I finally walk across the deck to the cabin door and step into the hall between the cabin and the elevator. I step off to the side, letting the door close behind me before leaning against the wall. Once I'm completely surrounded by darkness, I turn on my omni-tool, illuminating the hall with the dull orange glow. I scan through my personal data to what I have that EDI recovered from the Black Shadows' database the day my old squad-mates saved me from the assassins and killed the majority of them. EDI kept a lot of the data to herself, but she gladly shared the "Insurgency Initiative" data with me at my request.

I call up the file containing their original plan. A fake distress signal, usurping control of life support from EDI, backing me into a corner and forcing me to take command of their strike on the Citadel—everything in my dream. Maybe the visions I've been having lately have been coming _because_ I wanted details on Orion and his Shadows' psychotic intentions. Maybe I'm torturing myself now, maybe as retribution for my use of the Reapers. I should really stop wondering what might've happened and just be thankful that, in real life, I didn't linger in the Athena Nebula and went straight to Sanctuary from Thessia. But I can't help it. I can't help thinking _Could it be real?_ Chances are what I dreamed would've been exactly what happened. That's enough to kill me in itself.

Sadly, I glance back at the door, on the other side of which is my sleeping boyfriend. I could never have survived any of this without him, but there have still been nights I wondered if it would've been best for us both that I ended this a long time ago. If maybe breaking his heart might have saved his life in the end. One night, I almost asked him about it. I stopped myself, of course. I already knew what his answer would be and I didn't need to hear it. So my nightmares that night consisted of all the ways I could've avoided opening these gates and kept him from becoming the Shadows' target #1 when the time came. At least it made me realize that following through would've been the biggest mistake I could ever have made. But that realization made me wake up crying and I think that broke Garrus' heart just as bad.

I groan and bury myself in the wall, sinking to the floor as I do. Why can't I make this stop? Why does the past keep taking hold of me like this? Why won't I accept what's happened and move on and just let myself find some happiness again? In all those myths I love so much, any in which the hero doesn't die end with some sort of happy ending. Then again, I don't know of many in which the hero dies and comes back, let alone being brought back by the bad guys through months of "reassembly" as a tool for galactic domination. Still, I can't deny that some arrogant part of me believes I've earned the chance to live the rest of my life in some sense of peace—I did save _the entire galaxy_ , after all. On the other hand, I can't deny that some selfless part of me feels like I missed my chance and that I should still be fighting to give that peace to someone more deserving. All of me agrees with one thing: I'm completely in love with Garrus Vakarian and if anyone in the galaxy deserves the peace I'm hoping for, it's him. And he's made it abundantly clear that any sort of peace he could feel is coming from having me here with him at all.

As that thought takes over, I glance over my right hand. There's a scar on it, barely visible amid the lines already across it, from where a shard of glass cut it. That night takes me over…

 _"I love you no matter what, Sara Shepard. Nothing will ever change that."_

I smile to myself, so brightly that, just like that night, a small flow of joyful tears comes to the brim of my eyes. Though that could be attributed to my apparent exhaustion, it still draws forth a brief, quiet laugh as I push the tears away. Garrus has become my release. Sometimes, he's the only thing showing me why my life is still worth living. He's always there for me, never for a second letting me doubt that this love we have is real. With that knowledge ringing through me, I find the will to shut off my omni-tool and head back into my cabin and across the deck back to my bed. He's still right there, as if he's waiting for me. I gladly take back his hand and crawl back into his arms, curled up beside him. When I fall asleep again, the nightmares plaguing me for so long are the last thing on my mind.

As such, the sleep I face tonight is blissfully dreamless.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – Garrus

When I wake up, I instantly act on what's become a reflex over the past two months and reach out to my side. This morning, I find it impossible. I open my eyes and see why.

She's right there beside me, like always, this time clutching one of my hands and leaning on the other.

I smile to myself at the sight, moving closer to her. For several minutes, I'm content to just lie here with her, one hand tight against hers as the other feels her steady heartbeat and softly strokes her light red hair with one talon. I close my eyes again, listening to her quiet, gentle breathing. I've never felt so strongly that I belong somewhere until now.

Everything has been… _perfect_ since she came back. Every stolen moment, every night holding to each other like this, the day we spent on Palaven—for all the dreams I had of the life we could have together, both during the war and after, living it is proving to be even better than I hoped. Even breaking the news to my dad and sister about my human girlfriend went better than I expected. Maybe our luck will hold. Maybe someday we'll get a chance at the plans we made on Earth.

Suddenly, Shepard shifts positions, curling up beside me as her heartbeat just barely rises. Right. Things haven't been all that perfect. The main reason we spend every night like this is because it eases what won't go away: her nightmares. It seems like they're getting worse. Every other night now, she physically reacts to whatever terrors are plaguing her sleeping mind and wakes up at least once in some sort of panic. I was hoping, with the Reapers out of the picture, I wouldn't have to worry about her as much anymore. But with all we've been through to get here and all it's done to her, worrying about her has taken up most of my time lately. She hasn't even attempted to dissuade me—she's made it seem like the worrying is doing her some good sometimes—and there are days when that only makes it worse.

 _Like the night she broke the bathroom mirror._

 _Or the night I woke up to find her turning an arrow in her hands—the first arrow she fired at me under the Shadows' command._

 _Or the morning she woke up in tears and clung to me, begging not the usual "Never let me go again" but a desperate "Never let me hurt you again."_

I push those thoughts away and hold her tighter. I'm not making things any better by weighing myself down like that when she's depending on me. She's alive, she's with me, and she knows I love her as much as she loves me. That should be enough.

It should be. It's not.

She moves again, this time bringing the hand not clutching mine around to keep me close.

I have to smile as I feel her touch against me. Maybe it is enough.

"How long have you been awake?"

The question surprises me enough to open my eyes. I lean back to look at her and find my gaze meeting sparkling emerald eyes. The sight alone brings the smile back. "I don't know. I didn't care."

She smiles back, her eyes shining as she does, confirmation she is truly happy.

"Why? Did you want me to go?"

" _No_." She answers about as soon as I've asked the question, her voice almost commanding. Almost desperate. Then she sighs. "…no." She closes her eyes again and leans up against me. "Let's just stay like this for a while."

I gladly follow her lead, returning to the position I'd adopted only a moment ago as the hand she has wrapped around me finds its way to my scars. I cherish every second here. We both fought so hard for so long for this chance and believed for over a year that we'd lost it forever. We need to take as much of it as we can before life gets in the way again.

"I wish we could stay here forever," her voice penetrates my senses again, softer now.

"I know. I want that, too." I smile to myself at the thought of it. "Guess that'd qualify as the 'happy ending' you were looking for, huh?"

She freezes for a moment before sadly turning over. She doesn't let go of my hand and the other is still pressed to my scars though turned so that the backs of her fingers are against them instead. I'd be worried that she changed her mind about staying here if not for the way she keeps close to me, nudging me with her leg to signal to tighten my hold on her.

"What's wrong?" I quickly ask, the worry seeping back into my mind.

"…I've been wondering a lot lately if that was ever an option for us. If we can ever find any peace together. You know what we've been through together—we're practically cursed."

I look at her in shock. "…Sara…"

She sighs at the use of her first name, burying the side of her face against the pillow. "You heard the myths from me. You know that romances historically end in tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and Isolde, Orpheus, Oedipus—"

" _We're not them_ ," I cut in forcefully, "We've made it this far."

"How much farther can it go before something happens? I've already died twice and my most recent resurrection has been severely downplayed; if I hit my third life, it's gonna be pretty definite this time. And if something happens to you…" She doesn't have the will to finish. Sadly, she slowly pulls her hand away from my scars. "Besides…you deserve better than I can give you."

For a few seconds, I stare at her in shock, wondering how she could possibly think that's true. Yes, she's been through a lot, but we both have scars. And if this is about the interspecies problems, we've already covered any concerns I can imagine she'd have. What did she dream last night that made her think…?

 _"Never let me hurt you again."_

The memory of her plea draws me to act, pulling my hands away from her so I can bring her to face me again. "You're wrong. And even if it was true, I'd never be able to settle for anyone else but you."

She keeps her eyes locked on mine for a moment, each of us trapped in the other's gaze and unable to look away. After I-don't-care-how-long, she finds the will to close her eyes. "But _I don't_ deserve _you_."

"I've known you too long to think that's true either. You deserve to be happy and I've been fighting for you for too long—"

"Fighting _against me_ in some cases."

…oh, spirits. "It wasn't your fault."

She just looks at me. Clearly, she doesn't see it that way.

I press myself against her, all but forcing her to stay close to me. "Please don't leave me now, Shepard. You know I can't let you go."

For a moment too long, she doesn't move. Then she reaches up to take my hand again. "I know. 13 months and you never did." With a sigh, she pulls back from my grasp enough to meet my eyes. "I'm sorry. I just…I don't understand why anyone would stand by me like you have." How can she not understand? How could she not see in herself what I see every time I look at her? As if in answer, she turns away from my gaze, her own eyes nowhere near as alight as I've known them to be. "I told you that I never really cared about anyone before Eden Prime. … _no one_ 's _ever_ cared about me either."

I keep my eyes on her, every emotion I have storming inside me—sympathy for her, rage at whoever made her believe that, confusion at how anyone could not care about her. Finally, that storm takes over and my hand finds its way into her hair, pulling her up to me. We both lose ourselves in the kiss that follows. The way she wraps herself around me proves it. I'd stay like this for the rest of my life if it were an option, but that's out of the question the second I remember I have to breathe. But even when I pull back, she stays where she is, close enough to dive back in within a second. "I care about you," I say softly, "More than you could ever know."

She smiles lightly. "I do know. It can't possibly be more than I love you."

I can't deny the surges of emotion inside me those words bring out, feelings so strong that no one else in the galaxy could possibly invoke in a lifetime what she shows me in five seconds. Before I met her, I had no idea a love could be so powerful. Of course, my time with her has shown me a lot of things I thought were impossible. That I could fall so hard for a human is by far not the most surprising of them all.

She lets her eyes close almost peacefully as she returns us to the position we woke up to. "Alright. Let's try this again. No talking this time."

I smirk to myself for a moment. "Deal." Then I close my eyes as well and get lost in the embrace. As we stay close together, time stops. I take in every aspect of this moment with her, carving it into my memory. This is the moment I want to fall into completely next time something happens to one of us—

 _Don't think like that! Nothing's happening this time. No matter what I have to do, I'm going to make sure of that._ The thought makes me hold her just a little tighter. She doesn't seem to mind. If anything, she gladly reciprocates. Nothing else changes for the next…hour? I don't know or care how long we stay like this. I just know EDI eventually comes on the line to say someone needs Shepard on the engineering deck.

Shepard sighs as she pulls away from me. "Someday, I'm gonna turn off the intercom." She pulls herself to her feet, but I don't let go of her hand. She looks between our locked hands and me for a second. "Garrus, we've been over this."

Yeah, we have. But she knows she can't blame me for wanting to have as much time with her as I possibly can. "EDI, is this actually an emergency?"

 _"The level of urgency is arbitrary," the AI answers, "It is not a matter of life or death, but it does require immediate attention."_

I sigh. "I'm with you. Turn off the intercom."

Shepard just smirks at me. "Next time." With that, she starts to pry herself from my grasp.

Before she can, I give her hand a brief tug, bringing her over so I can kiss her. When she does manage to pull her hand free and wraps it around me, mine finds its way to her hair and draws her even closer to me. After we pull apart, I keep my eyes on hers for a moment, watching the emerald gleam that comes as she smiles affectionately to me. "I love you, Shepard."

Her smile brightens. "I know." She presses her hand to my face without taking her eyes away from mine. "I always did." Then she kisses me one more time and rushes off.

Once she's out of the room, there's no reason for me to stay. About 15 minutes later, I've headed back to the main battery to check over the systems. Thanks to EDI making sure my original changes hold, though, there's not much for me to check over. Usually, I just come by here to kill time anymore. As such, I'm reduced to looking over the calibrations five times with no alterations before I give up and turn to the door. My intention is to check on some of the other crewmen. When the door opens, I immediately dismiss it.

Shepard is coming into the mess area at almost the exact same time I start to step out of the battery. She's looking over a datapad and Daniels and Donnelly are right behind her. Whatever was going on in engineering must have been serious. She finally turns to the two engineers and hands back the datapad. I can't tell what she's saying from here, but it's pretty clear she's taken care of it. As the two of them step aside, she heads over to the pantries and locates her personal stockpile.

I smile just at the sight of her, leaning contentedly against the side of the open battery door. Four months ago, I would've killed for the chance to live this moment—to see her the way I always remembered her and know that she was alive and with me. Now I have the chance to do just that knowing it never has to end. But I still take it in as if it's the last I'll ever see of her.

Her light red hair falls over her shoulders in soft waves. Her emerald eyes casually glance over the entire deck like she's watching for danger. Even so, she lets herself relax for once and leans back against the counter as she starts going through the snacks she procured for herself the day after she came back. She's dressed in a black button-up, long-sleeved top; dark blue pants; and black and white boots—the same thing she was wearing the night before Omega-4. I thought that the moment I saw her smile at me outside the casino was the moment she was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. I was wrong. She's always just as beautiful as she was that night.

She finally turns in just the right way to see me standing here watching her. I don't make any attempt to cover my actions or even take my eyes off her. She gives me an amused smirk before taking a small handful of her snacks from the box and putting the box itself back. Then she makes her way over to me. "Aren't you supposed to be working, Vakarian?"

I shake my head at her as she steps into the battery with me, letting the door close behind her. "EDI started storing my calibrations in her databanks. Saves me a lot of trouble. …leaves me not much else to do in here."

She scoffs, holding back a laugh. "Want me to tell her to call it off? I know how much you enjoy calibrating this thing."

"And I know how much you love watching me go at it."

"Shut up."

"I'm sorry, I thought you said my voice was attractive to you."

"Knock it off! _I'm_ the one who's supposed to be messing with _you_!"

"Really? Because I think it's more fun when we do it together."

She rolls her eyes at me before turning to the food in her hand.

I can't suppress my curiosity any longer. "Alright, what are you eating?"

She looks at me curiously. "You mean turians have chocolate but they don't have pretzels?" She looks at the last one she pulled out and shrugs. "Maybe we should be making a list."

I finally turn back to the console. "Shepard, we need to face facts: even I can't be the one turian who fully understands humans."

"Well, to be fair, most humans never fully understand each other."

"…I see your point."

She smiles as she takes a step closer to me. "And I'd like to think we're at the point in our relationship where species doesn't matter."

I smirk as I turn my full attention to her. "Don't you think we crossed that line before Omega-4?"

"I see your point."

I take a moment to take in the sight of her again. This is exactly how I saw her that night. The thought of it brings the memory of that night back to the front of my mind. That night, I was nervous and unsure how we'd ever make this work. Now, I'm certain we'll always have each other and that certainty has given me no reason to let the nerves come back. Even if I did, she'd be right there to talk me out of it in a second. But, no. No, I let the nerves get in the way of too much back then and I'm not the kind of person to make the same mistake twice—especially not when it comes to someone I love.

"…so…" she breaks the silence I didn't realize we had fallen into, "…are we going to do something or just stand here?"

In answer, I do the one thing I never would've done two years ago: I grab her by the waist, pull her up to me as close as I can, and kiss her with all the passion that accumulated from the day we met. As she gives in to it, my right hand slowly works its way up her back, feeling the curve of her spine. But instead of letting it slide into her hair, I let it slide over her shoulder and down to the buttons of her top—

Suddenly, the door opens, shocking me into pulling my hand away and breaking off from the kiss as much as I can while still staying close, and Liara steps in. "Shepard. EDI said you were—" She then notices that Shepard and I are still pressed against each other, her arms wrapped around me and my left hand practically clutching her lower back. "…is this a bad time?"

Shepard sighs, stepping away from me and almost mournfully pushing my hand away. "No. It's fine. What's the problem?"

"Tali is on the line. She wants to talk to you."

Shepard quickly abandons her somewhat saddened state and nods in acknowledgement before following her off. "Wait, why didn't EDI just call me?"

"She said you requested not to be disturbed through the intercom."

Shepard groans. "…this is not what I meant."

I watch her go as long as I can before the door closes back. I turn back to the console, my thoughts ringing with Liara's words and wondering why Tali would be calling and what could be so urgent.

For the first five days after Shepard's return, all 11 of our previous squad-mates had stuck around to welcome her back to the life she'd left behind. On the fifth day, most of them headed back to where they were before the Shadows attacked. Liara, Ashley, and James gladly stuck around (and EDI obviously had to since her operations are confined to the _Normandy_ anyway), but Tali went back to Rannoch to help her people and the geth with the re-colonization. She did check in on us every day, something none of the others did with half that frequency, but if she was relaying the signal through EDI and Liara to make sure she got to Shepard instead of just waiting to call us back later, something big must be going on.

Ten minutes later, my suspicions are confirmed. _"Joker," Shepard's voice rings through the intercom, "take us to the Citadel."_

Something _very_ big.

 _Two hours later…_

"So why did Tali want to talk to us on the Citadel?" I ask as I follow Shepard out of the Citadel's main docking bay and into the Wards, Liara and Ashley and EDI and James just behind us.

"She said she was at the embassies on business when she finished going through some data and she found something that had to be discussed in person," Shepard explains, "She said she'd meet us in the markets but she didn't go into detail."

"Sounds like she's worried someone might be hacking our communications," Ashley observes.

"And with Tali, such worries are usually justified," Liara affirms, "We should be careful."

"I look forward to the day I don't have to hear those words every five minutes…" James groans. As much as I would love to make some snappy retort, I actually agree with him.

I stay close to Shepard as we move, keeping my eyes on her—trusting her to guide my steps in doing so—and watching every move she makes. After so long, I'd like to think I know her better than most people. If that's true, I know the signs I'm seeing are real. There's tension in her very bones, pain buried behind her determined gaze, a subtle tremor to every move she makes. If we were in a combat situation or under the threat of one, it could all easily be attributed to stress, injury, or simple watchfulness. But here, now, it's clearly something more. The instincts I've developed in these past two months scream at my consciousness to take her side, ask her what the problem is, and do everything in my power to help. But that's not something I should be doing with our squad-mates five feet behind us.

Tuning my concerned observation to the back of my mind, I focus on the passing landscape as we move through the station. It doesn't take long for us to reach the markets. But when we do, there's no sign of Tali.

Shepard sighs. "Remember how I said she didn't go into detail? She didn't exactly specify where in the markets to meet." She runs her hand through her hair for a second, thinking this over. "Alright, fan out, see if you can find her. I'll stay here in case she's not here yet."

Liara, Ash, James, and EDI all readily nod and head out in separate directions.

I don't.

Shepard turns her attention to me. "Garrus, do we have to discuss this?"

" _Sara_." The firm use of her first name brings her to shy away for half a second. That tells me I'm striking a nerve. "Something's bothering you. You know I can tell."

She looks at me for a moment, her eyes slowly softening as she lets her walls down for me. The only person she trusts to let through them.

I take a step closer to her, my hand at the ready to take hers. "What's wrong?"

She shakes it off. "Nothing, it's just…" She looks around at the Ward around us. "…there's a lot of memories in this place…some more pleasant than others."

That much I can understand. After all, this station is the place where we first met. The place we killed our first Reaper. The place we both realized what we were feeling for each other. The place we danced together. The place she first told me she loved me in one of the best moments of my entire life.

But it's also the place where the Sidonis incident occurred. The place she died. The place we found each other again only for her wounded mind to lead her to almost kill me and—

I push back the memories. I can't let myself fall into them, not anymore. "You can't change the past." Ignoring the people around us, I press my hand against her and bring her to meet my eyes again. "But it doesn't matter. What matters is what's happening now."

She keeps her eyes on me for only a second before looking down. As she does, she reaches up her hand to where she knows she can feel my heart beating. In response, I place mine against hers. My thoughts get lost in the rhythm of her blood as we both—

"Shepard!"

Shepard visibly jumps back at the sound of her name being called. Then she turns to see who did it. "Tali!"

Our quarian friend walks up to her, gladly taking the following hug as Ashley comes up behind her. "It's good to see you again, Shepard. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Shepard smirks as she steps back, "Garrus won't let me be otherwise."

I have to nudge her for that one, playfully though it may be.

"Garrus," Tali says, "It's good to see you, too."

"Likewise, Tali."

James then comes back, Liara and EDI not far behind. "Sorry, Commander, no sign of—oh. Hey, Sparks. Glad to see you."

After Tali simply nods to him and briefly exchanges greetings with Liara and EDI, Shepard steps up again. "So why'd you call us in?"

Tali calls up her omni-tool. "That data I mentioned when I called you? It's about the Shadows."

The Black Shadows. The syndicate of assassins that brought Shepard back as a tool of galactic conquest and tried to kill everyone she cared about to trap her in that position forever. We all hoped never to hear about them again. Right now, those odds aren't looking so good.

"What about them?" Shepard asks, noticeably tensing at the mention of those she now considers her greatest tormentors.

"Shepard," Tali answers, "were you aware that they had secondary bases on other worlds and stations besides the ones we hit?"

"Yeah, I was. But once we took down Orion, they lost leadership. I figured the bases wouldn't have been a concern."

"Normally, they wouldn't. But the readings this data leads to indicate most of those facilities recently went active."

" _What_?" Her tension jumps straight to confusion, shock, rage, and minuscule tinges of fear.

"Calm down," I quickly jump in, "We don't know it's the Shadows. Maybe someone else took over their old bases."

"So many at once? I don't think so. But the Shadows coming back into operation doesn't make sense either—we took out too many of their troops and the one commanding them all."

"Wait," Ashley steps up, "Tali, how'd you get that data anyway?"

"It was transmitted straight to my omni-tool a few hours ago," Tali explains, "I assumed it was one of the data-mines EDI was running on the intel we salvaged from the base on Omega."

"I have not recently completed decryption on any previously locked files," EDI counters, "and no data I already have access to would lead to the readings we see here."

"What?! But if you didn't send it to me, who did?"

"The only people who would have access to this information would be active Black Shadow operatives. However, I see no logical reason behind sending you warning that they are active at all."

I start thinking this over, glancing passively at the markets around us as James makes some comment about none of the Shadows ever having brilliant strategy (which is true enough except for Orion himself). I let my eyes wander for a moment as I restrict the urge to pace and consider the options for answering the question before us. I stop when I catch sight of something. I see a familiar glint in the catwalks overhead where the keepers tend to the ducts. Now my mind is racing with two questions:

1) Why does that glint seem familiar?

2) Why would the Shadows send us their own strategic intel?

Both answers come at once, striking me in half a second like an electric shock.

1) I saw it every time Legion pulled his Widow rifle.

2) To get us all in the same place.

Those thoughts send me falling back into soldier's instinct so fast that I don't even realize I'm moving until I've grabbed hold of Shepard and pushed her aside, telling the others to " _Get down_!"

The exact same second I make the move is the second the gun goes off in the catwalks. Since I pushed Shepard back in that second, the bullet flies past where we were standing and hits a display at one of the stands. Liara, Tali, Ash, James, and EDI all scramble out of the way as Shepard and I move aside and the markets erupt in chaos around us.

That's when the bullets start flying.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Shepard

Garrus and I scramble to get to cover as the gunshots keep up. I can distantly see the civilians scatter out of the line of fire as Tali, Liara, Ash, EDI, and James duck behind cover as well. Tali and EDI ready for tech attacks as Liara fires up her biotics, but Ash and James are left searching for weapons.

"We need to stop leaving the ship!" I groan, "We can't go five minutes off it before someone starts shooting at us!"

We all have our shields (and, in Liara's case, barrier) activated at all times, so we have enough protection to take a few seconds of fire. Knowing this, Garrus' first move is to scan the area. "I can't get a read on them. There's at least one sniper on the keeper walkways, but there's way too much fire coming down on us for that to be the only one."

"The Shadows prefer stealthier attacks," I reason through this, "Striking all seven of us in the public markets during business hours doesn't match that pattern, but staying out of sight while doing it and using as many forces as they can to do so makes sense."

"So it _is_ the Shadows?!"

"I don't know. But what's important is taking them out before they break through our defenses or someone gets caught in the crossfire." I search the area, looking for some way to get the upper hand without any weapons. In a few seconds, I find something I can use.

There's an access ladder against the back wall that leads up to the keepers' walkways Garrus said the sniper was on. If I can get up there, I can take the sniper down, which will at least give us all more chances to get around. The only problem with my newly-formed plan is that the ladder is across a distance of 30 meters, 25 of which are open space in which I'll be a perfect target. My shields can carry me halfway to the stand that can act as cover, but I'll be completely exposed for the second half of the run as well as on the ladder itself. If I take too many hits before I even get on the catwalks, I won't stand a chance. Someone's gonna have to cover me.

I turn to Garrus. "You trust me, right?"

He looks at me for a second. "Well, I do, but the fact that you have to ask makes me wonder if I should."

"I need you to draw their fire."

"And that's why."

"Just get across to the others and tell them to switch cover every few seconds—it should keep the Shadows distracted long enough for me to get to them."

"I'm sorry, did you just say you want to go _towards_ the people that are shooting at us?! UNARMED?!"

"Do you trust me or not?!"

He takes a moment to consider the plan. I know what's going through his head. He's thinking there's a chance I could get hurt, possibly critically. There is. He swore a long time ago that he wouldn't risk my safety—that he'd never lose me again. But he also knows that we don't have many options at this point. Which is why he finally sighs and turns back to me. "Just say the word."

I nod and get ready to move, distantly noting that he does the same. I focus entirely on what I hear around us, wait for a break in the fire just long enough to get moving. Wait…wait… _wait_ … "Now!" Garrus goes running across the way to the others as soon as I give the signal, giving me the chance to duck out and, once I'm certain enemy fire has been concentrated in a single direction which is not pointed at me, rush to the ladder. Five meters from the stand between me and the ladder, bullets start flying towards me again, telling me Garrus already reached the others and our assailants saw me moving. So they know where I am. That's gonna make the rest of my plan a bit more difficult.

My shields reliably catch the shots until I'm behind cover and my friends reliably implement my instructions two seconds later, giving me at least a chance of reaching the ladder itself. I wait for a break in the fire again and then jump for the ladder, dashing up it two rungs at a time like I haven't done since I was 17. Once I've reached the top, I leap over the railing and onto the catwalks, racing across them until I locate the sniper. The sniper in question, though, sees me about the same time and takes aim. I do my best to evade the shots, kicking up against the railing to get my feet off the walkway and then bouncing off to the other side before coming close enough to strike. The sniper activates an omni-blade as soon as I come close, forcing me to duck down. But instead of falling into the blade's following arc, I roll around my attacker, wrap my arms around their neck, and use all the strength my modified anatomy allows to snap it. The sniper falls onto the walkway, letting me take their rifle and their firing position.

Through the scope, I scan the area myself. I can see my squad-mates sticking to cover, Tali and EDI and Liara tossing out specialized attacks every now and then. More importantly, I can see the gunmen taking aim at them. Without hesitation, I cock the gun in my hands and start tearing through the enemy forces. Three headshots later, they realize where I am and what I'm doing and turn their fire to me. I duck down, dodging the bullets as much as I can to keep my shields running. Of course, after about 30 seconds of this, it proves to be a good thing. Because with the wave taken down by four and focusing entirely on me, the others have no problem getting in close enough to finish them off. As soon as the bullets stop flying, I check the vicinity one more time.

I sigh with relief when I find no one else there. "Clear," I report into my COMM.

 _"Shadows?" Garrus questions one last time._

I turn to look at the sniper I took down. The black uniform and goggles obscuring any form beneath are unmistakable. "…Shadows."

Five minutes later, C-Sec is all over the markets, trying to find out what happened. Can't say I'm not wondering the same thing.

As the security agents secure the area, I make my way over to my squad-mates. "Is everyone alright?"

"Shields took most of the damage," Ashley sighs, leaning against a wall, "EDI got hit a few times, but it's nothing she can't have fixed in a few minutes."

"Alright then," James says, "So now that that's taken care of… _what was that_?!"

"Looks to me like the Shadows are pretty ticked we took out their boss."

"Do you think that means Wrex and Miranda and the others are in danger, too?" Tali asks.

"I don't know," I answer, "We'd better call them when we head back, see if they're seeing anything unusual either." I then look to make sure none of the C-Sec agents are watching and pull out the sniper rifle I took from the Shadow on the walkways. "And while we're doing that, Liara, you should look into this. It's custom modified—that can be traced."

Liara nods, taking it. "I'll have EDI and Glyph help me the moment we're back on the ship."

"We'd better get going now," Garrus suggests, "There could be more of them just waiting for a chance to finish us off."

"Right," I agree, "Let's go." I start off back towards the docking bay, letting the others follow me. "Stay close and watch your backs. There might be more waiting to take another shot."

Tali sighed. "I was hoping this would be the one time we got to see each other without getting attacked."

"Perhaps next time," EDI suggests.

I shake my head at the exchange before heading back the way we came. As I head toward the docking bay, I think this over. We took out about half of the Shadows' troops and Orion himself on Omega and over the two weeks before. Even if they were still active, why wait until now to bring their secondary bases back into operation and organize a strike on us? And what could they hope to gain from it besides throwing away what troops they have left on petty revenge? The only reason I can think of for them to strike at us would be if they were going back to their original plan, but they don't have the manpower for a siege on the Citadel anymore and Orion's not around to usurp the Council anyway. What are they up to?

And who's putting them up to it?

"I'll start tracing the gun," Liara says as we draw close to the _Normandy_ , heading through the airlock first.

"Guess that means I'll be calling the others," I reason. Before stepping onboard, I turn to Tali. "Are you sticking around or do they still need you on Rannoch?"

"I've done what I had to do on the station," Tali answers, "If I call Raan to report in and explain that someone is trying to kill me again, I'm sure they won't miss me for a few days." She steps aside to do so.

That leaves me to head to the COMM room. I move across the deck, concern growing inside me with every step. _What if the Shadows have replenished their numbers more than I thought? What if they already found and hit the others?_ The concern dissipates to some degree when I open the connections and find all six of them still active. I take a moment to breathe and ready myself. Then I make the call.

Within a few moments, Miranda, Jacob, Samara, Jack, Grunt, and Wrex have all answered.

 _"Shepard," Miranda makes the greeting. She then notices that five other lines are tapped in and who are on the other ends. "Is something wrong?"_

 _"I'll say something is!" Jack snaps, "Shepard, when we took out Orion, you said the Shadows would leave us alone! So why did I just have to fight off six of them in the last two hours?!"_

The concern comes flooding back in at those words. _Oh no._

 _"What?!" Jacob instantly demands._

 _"I also have faced the assassins' forces," Samara confirms, "Nine since this morning."_

I sigh and come out with it: "Tali called us in to the Citadel today and a whole squadron opened fire on us in the markets. We made it out, obviously, but they were definitely Shadows."

 _Wrex growls. "How many times are we going to have to wear those pyjaks down before they'll learn to leave us alone?!"_

"Apparently, twice. And we'll have a better chance of doing that if we stick together."

 _Grunt, of course, is practically giddy at the idea. "Perfect. Another battle with skilled opponents—just point me at the right target."_

I have to smirk at that. I can always count on Grunt when combat is on the table. "We're still docked at the Citadel. You can find us here. Liara should have a lead for us to follow by the time we meet up."

 _"Well," Jacob says, "can't exactly wait here if there's a bunch of assassins after us again. I'll head out as soon as I can."_

 _"And I'll head out immediately," Miranda adds, Samara concurring silently._

"Good," I say, "Watch your backs until you get here. They might close in at any time."

 _"Let them," Grunt laughs, "I'll be ready."_

"Of that, I have no doubt." I turn to Miranda's connection. "Miranda, I'll send you the data we already have on the Shadows. See if you can find something we might have missed." After she nods, I turn back to the full connection. "We'll be on the Silversun Strip when you get here."

 _"Got it," Wrex nods, "See you tomorrow, Shepard."_

I nod back. "OK. Shepard out." With that, I disable the connection. Once it's down, I turn on my omni-tool and call up the data we have on the Shadows, preparing to send it to Miranda. No sooner have I sent it than my gaze catches on one file in particular. I stare at it for a second before leaning back against the COMM room wall and opening the file.

 _Orpheus Protocol_

 _Should attempts at controlling our revived insurgent meet with failure, her consciousness may reform. To prevent any interference with the plan, sever any connections she may have with her previous life. If this proves ineffective, send her to do it herself—as aggressively as possible—before her memories are restored. The resulting emotional backlash should be psychologically scarring enough to suppress all pre-restoration memories and leave her vulnerable to our commands._

 _13 priority targets:_

 _Priority #1—Garrus Vakarian_

I don't bother reading the rest. On the contrary, I open the portion of the file expounding on Garrus' place in the protocol.

 _Garrus Vakarian—turian_

 _Advisor to Primarch Victus, gunnery chief of the_ SSV Normandy SR-2 _, previously operated as the vigilante Archangel on Omega_

 _Intel on the_ Normandy _crew indicates Vakarian was romantically involved with Commander Sara Shepard, suggesting his death will produce the most severe emotional reaction. For greatest effect, poison should be utilized to prolong suffering as long as possible before leading her to witness the end._

The file continues to describe the neurotoxin in question, the chemicals included and the symptoms it would produce—hallucinations, muscle weakness—but I don't need to read about it. I saw it take hold.

I don't know how long I'm standing here, leaning against the wall with my eyes locked on the display, before someone cuts into it. A familiar hand reaches over and turns off my omni-tool itself. I follow it and find that it leads to piercing blue eyes. "We stopped them, Sara. And we're going to do it again."

I look down at the floor for a second. "Yeah, I know. It's just that…I look back at those days and…there are times I do feel weak or vulnerable. But just a few. The rest of the time, I spend every second wishing we could bring Orion back to life solely so we could kill him again—slower this time."

He smirks. "Well, I guess that thought's crossed my mind, too." Then he meets my eyes again and that gleam in his that I love so much fades away. "…but that's not what's bothering you."

Of course, it's not. And I should've known I couldn't hide that from him. When the thought strikes me, I even realize that I don't want to. He already has my heart; he deserves to see what's on my mind. "…they almost killed you last time, Garrus." As the words come free, memories flash in my mind of the days before he woke me up, of all the times I watched carelessly as the poison pounded through his blood, eating away at every defense he had and breaking him down more and more with every delirious thought of me and the love we had before he lost me apparently forever. Those give way to thoughts of the year we spent torn from each other, neither knowing the other was alive and desperate. I don't realize what the reflection is doing to me until I feel my eyes watering and every part of me cries with the words that come next: "I can't lose you."

My eyes are turned down and closed to ward off the urge to let the tears fall free, so I can't see how he reacts. But I don't need to see him. I only need to feel the way he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close, letting me lean into him and find the strength and solace I always found here during the war. "I can't make any promises—not when we both know I'd rather die than lose you again. But I know all too well what it's like to live without the love of your life and I never want you to go through that. We will stop them. And if I have anything to say about it, we'll both come back alive."

Coming from him? I can believe that.

I smile as I pull closer to him, laying my head against his shoulder and taking in the feeling of the embrace—

"Shepard?"

I can't keep myself from growling this time. _How many times can these people possibly interrupt us?!_ "What is it?" I ask as I step back from Garrus and turn to see who's calling.

Tali is walking up. "I was right, I'll be able to stay here long enough for us to settle this. I just wanted to let you know I'll be in engineering if you need me."

I can't deny a smile, though. "If you ask me, Tali, that's where you belong."

I'm pretty sure she's smiling back, but I've never been able to tell. "Thank you, Shepard. Call me when it's time to head out." With that, she heads toward the front of the deck to take the elevator down to deck 4.

Once she's gone, I turn back to Garrus. "Maybe we should head back to my cabin before we try this again."

Garrus, however, seems to be thinking this over. "…actually…" He's already smiling when he turns back to me with a new thought: "After the fight on Earth, Liara took the claim to the apartment Anderson gave you and sent it to me. No one's touched it in over a year."

The moment I see what he's suggesting, my spirits rise. "…so the Shadows probably don't even know about it."

He catches onto my thinking immediately. "Right. And they probably do know that the ship is in the docking bay."

"Which means they could come by any minute."

"Unless, of course, we're not here."

"So it'd actually be pretty irresponsible for us to stay here—make the rest of the crew targets, too."

"Guess we'll have to take one for the team."

"Now would be best." With that, I start off, letting him follow me out. And take my hand as we leave the docking bay together.

 _An hour later…_

I smile as I look around the apartment Anderson gave me during our shore leave about 16 months ago. Unlike most of the rest of the station, this place doesn't summon a collective of emotions. Every memory I have here is a good one.

Garrus walks in behind me, letting the door close and lock behind us. "I suppose this would be an appropriate time to say 'Welcome home.'"

I smirk. "The day I came back to the _Normandy_ was, too. Of course, you were unconscious at the time it would've been most relevant."

He winces sheepishly. "Yeah, sorry about that."

"You saved my life. Why be sorry?"

He starts fiddling with his hands again. He always does that when he's nervous or unsure what to say. "Well…after it was all over, you did tell me not to do it again."

I turn my full attention to him, making sure he can see the emotion behind what I say next: "I meant not to put my survival ahead of your own every time you think there's a chance something could happen. I know losing me was hard on you and I never want you to go through that again, but…"

He sighs, letting his hands down. "I know. Don't worry. Next time it's between the two of us, we'll find another way. Together."

"Right. Though, ideally, there should never, _ever_ be a 'next time.'"

He lets off a small laugh. "Point taken." He then thinks of something and calls up his omni-tool. "On that note, I should probably transfer ownership of this place back to you."

I quickly cut in. "No transfer. …copy it."

He looks at me in confusion. "What?"

"I can't go a night without you anyway. You've already pretty much completely moved from your old bunk to the captain's cabin on the ship. We might as well share the apartment, too."

Confusion turns to astonishment. "Sara, that's…are you sure about this?"

"More sure than about 70% of the decisions I've made in the past. Most of which have taught me a few things…" I think over the decisions in question, the vast majority occurring in the years before I first enlisted with the Alliance. I never loved anyone and I saw what love does to people so I swore that I never would. That all changed the moment I meant a certain turian sharpshooter. My days with him shed a whole new light on everything I thought I knew and all of it leads to the deepest truth I know: "None of us know when our time's gonna come for real. I used to believe we all die alone, but it's not true and I don't want it to be. I want to spend every second I possibly can with you. I'm not letting anything get in the way of that."

He keeps his eyes on mine for a moment, clearly considering my words. When he finally looks back down at his omni-tool, he takes a second to think it over. Then he follows my instructions. "You already know I feel the same way."

I can't fight the smile that comes at those words. I don't want to. "Yeah. I know." I reach over to take his hand. "We're partners, Garrus. In everything."

He smiles back. Then he looks around. "…huh."

"What?"

"It's funny, but…something feels different about this place."

"Maybe because of everything that's happened since I left. Or maybe something's just moved."

"Must be the first one. No one's been in here since the week we hit Cerberus Headquarters."

Those words strike me. "You mean you had the claim to this place for that long and you never came here?"

"Of course, I kept the claim! It was yours, like the ship, and as far as I was concerned, no one else could have it. But I never came here because…" As the words fade, he turns aside. "…well, you saw how I was when I thought you were gone. And there were too many memories here."

Too many memories. He's told me plenty of times about the almost 400 days he spent grieving me. Even before the Shadows poisoned him, he was losing himself with every thought of our time together. I'm convinced it's what threw him off the night the assassins first found him, why he lost his rhythm just enough for the poison to find its way into his blood at all. The hallucinations resulting from the toxin only made it worse, nearly got him killed about a dozen times solely because he knew I wasn't there and wasn't coming back. Korlus was when it turned truly deadly. Some part of him knew who I was even before I did, but…everything that happened before he finally woke me up just killed him a little more inside.

The thoughts break me down enough that I move closer to him, clutching his hand tighter and wrapping my free arm around him as I lay my head on his shoulder again. "I'm so sorry, Garrus."

He sighs, placing his hand on my arm. "Shepard, we've been over this. It wasn't your fault—"

"I know. It's not that." I feel him shift to look at me, probably in confusion again, but I don't move. "I don't care if I didn't have a choice, I still left you behind. And because of that…you almost died."

I'm expecting him to stop moving for a second as my words settle in and he thinks of how to respond. That's usually what he does when I release some big emotional revelation like that. Instead, his hand instantly tightens its hold on my arm, talons pressed firm against my flesh and forcing me back to meet his piercing dark gaze again. "That's not why I lost it. I did it to myself."

"You did it to yourself because you lost me."

"Yes, but I probably would've died a lot sooner if you didn't do what you did that day. Be honest: if you could go back to London right now, what would you do differently?"

I think it over for about half a second before I realize that I've always known what my answer would be. "Knowing what I know now, I'd take the hit for you and leave the fight myself."

"Then Harbinger would most definitely have killed every ground force we had, no one would have made it to the Crucible in time, and the Reapers would have destroyed us all."

"Or you could've gone through without me."

He dismisses that thought all too quickly. "Even if I could do half of what you did, don't you think that would've left the Shadows an opening to exploit…and you more vulnerable than ever?"

… _yes. I do._ I turn away. I can't face this.

"I don't regret that day anymore, Sara. It haunted me—losing you destroyed me—but now—"

Before he finishes, that same mechanical signal flashes through my mind, sharp enough to make me stumble back. It doesn't hurt that much—nowhere near the paralyzing agony that struck me during the Shadows' "procedures." I'm just startled. Despite having no pattern, the attacks usually only strike once every 24 hours and very rarely twice. Thankfully, three times never happens, but that doesn't make the rest easy. For a split second after this one hits, my mind is reeling with the same worries it's been wrestling with since I first realized it's Reaper code I'm seeing every time. Worries that I'm still a part of those synthetic monsters and not human anymore, that I'll never be the same person I was before I died.

That split second in which the worries almost get to me is cut short the moment I feel Garrus' hands against me. "Sara?" The sound of the voice I fell in love with calling me by my first name silences my storming thoughts. I must be the same person I was (if a little frayed around the edges now); _that's_ the person he loved and always will love…the person who loves him back.

Echoing that knowledge in my mind, I focus on my breathing for a second, try to keep it level. "I'm fine."

As soon as I say that, he tenses. "We're not at war anymore. You can stop saying that when we both know it isn't true."

" _No_. It is true this time." I press my hands against his and meet his eyes again, not bothering to hide the pleading look in mine. "Just don't let go of me." _I'm only alright with you here._

Understanding overtakes his apprehension, driving the tension away and leading him to bring me closer. "Never again."

I hate that our lives keep leading to moments like this, times when one—or both—of us feels fragile or broken. But I love the way those moments make us cling to each other. I love how he holds me close and the feeling of our hearts beating together. I long for the day we can do this without fear of losing each other, without getting lost in thoughts of our year of suffering.

We need to find the Shadows and take them down for good as soon as possible. Right now, it seems to be the only way we'll ever find that peace we're searching for.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – Garrus

Once Sara's emotional scare has calmed down, she heads up to the main bedroom and gets settled in. While she does, I look around. As far as I can tell, the traps I set up during the party are still in place and ready to ward off any intruders. But we're dealing with trained assassins now, the kind of people who dodge security systems for a living. The thought leads me to check over all the traps I had in place and start planning new ones. Although, hoping there really is no one outside our crewmates that knows where we are or even who this place belongs to, the first thing I do is close the shutters on the wall-length windows so that no one can see inside.

Twenty minutes later, she steps out of the bedroom and up to the railing overlooking the living area. "Garrus, what—" She then sees me checking a ventilation grate to make sure the tripwire rig I installed last time is still holding. "Oh, don't tell me you're going at it again!"

"Trained assassins are out there trying to kill us," I counter as I seal the grate off, "Can you blame me for being a little worried?"

"No, but we have guns up here."

"And what if we're down here when they come in?"

"No one knows about this place except the crew and they won't rat us out. I'm pretty sure we're safe here as is. And if this is just where your mind goes when you can't calibrate anything, we really need to find you a new hobby."

I toss her a brief look as I step away from the grate. "I'm perfectly happy making sure we both don't die, thank you very much."

"Garrus, you're killing yourself down there."

I'm on the verge of saying "I'd rather kill myself than lose you again" when I remember what that thought did only a half hour ago. She's right. I sigh and move to the stairs. "Alright, I'm coming up."

She looks at me as I reach her level, ready to sympathize the moment I show I need her. _And I always do._ "If you're worried about me, I'm back to normal again."

"Yes, and I suppose it'd be too much to ask you not to lose it like that next time. You know I can't take that."

The sympathy I was expecting would come loose there is pushed aside in favor of a hardened determination I know far too well. "Oh, trust me, if I have anything to say about it, that won't be happening again. I've spent my whole life fighting against senses of weakness and vulnerability—I endured for months what most living creatures wouldn't even survive. I won't let it break me now." Then her gaze softens and her next thought brings her to smile: "Especially not with you here to keep me together."

I can't fight back a small smile in return at those words. But then my own fears come creeping back in. I turn away for a moment before outright heading to the bedroom. "The Shadows can't beat us. We both know it and, if they had sense enough, they'd know it, too." I then sit down on the bed and let the rest of my worries free: "But what if it's not the Shadows after all? What if it's something worse?"

"Then we'll do what we always do," she smirks as she steps up to me and sits down on the bed beside me, "Hunt it down and shoot it to death before it gets a shot at us." She reaches over to take my hand again, her touch enough to chase away my darkened thoughts and her grasp tight enough to keep them from coming back. "I know how much you like to expect the worst, but you know this as well as I do: there's nothing we can't face together."

I find myself remembering how we took down a thresher maw on foot, sent one to attack a Reaper, fought off entire armies of krogan and geth and Collectors and Cerberus troops and Reaper ground forces capable of tearing us in half. We made it through all that. And we did it together. "Yeah. You're probably right. But every time we get close to winning for good, something goes wrong. We thought we won when Saren went down, then Sovereign came at us. We thought we won when you took out that Reaper on the Collector base, then it woke up again. We thought we won when we killed Orion, and now this is happening. We can't…"

Before I can keep going, she moves closer to me, wrapping her leg around mine so that I can't move and clutching my hand even tighter. It makes my heart speed up and my mind go blank until I can't remember what I was saying.

Somehow, though, I manage to find the words again. "…we can't keep fighting forever. Eventually, we'll have to…"

She uses the hand not compressing mine to pull me closer to her. I'm so close I can feel her heart beating without placing my hand against it. A fire ignites in my veins, burning through my blood with every second.

"…someday, we might not win the fight…or…we might not…"

She leans into me, pressing her cheek against my scars and gently nuzzling them. I find myself closing my eyes to take in the feeling of her skin against mine, soft and warm and something I never dreamed I could love so strongly.

"…we should…should really…"

"Garrus?" the voice I fell in love with whispers in my ear.

"…yeah?"

She pulls back to meet my gaze again, her emerald eyes sparkling as she smiles. "Stop talking." Then she moves in closer and kisses me, and everything around us ceases to exist. Only then does she release my hand so she can put both of hers in place to keep me close, letting me take hold of her with both of mine. My eyes are closed again, so my hands move blindly, one to grasp her light red hair and the other to the place I know I can feel her steadily rising heartbeat.

When we're finally forced to pull back just long enough to breathe, I start looking around.

"What?" she questions almost instantly.

"I'm just waiting for EDI to interrupt us."

She laughs. "No problem there. Could take all night for the rest of the team to reach the Citadel."

All night. That gives us about 18 hours alone. "Well, in that case…" This time, I take hold of her and dive back in, no reservations to be had. She gladly reciprocates, wrapping herself around me to close any distance remaining between us. Time falls away again until the point my lungs force me to retreat, but the moment I do is the moment she turns her affectionate action to my scars. I lean against her shoulder as she carries on, letting my hand rub her back around her ecstatic heartbeat. Before I know it, I'm pressed to her neck the way she's pressed to my scars and the side of my hand is sliding slowly down her spine, feeling her very bones shiver at the sensation. When the motion reaches her lower back, I move away from her spinal cord and around her waist to her stomach. …that's when I hit a snag. I pull back to look down, fumbling with the lowest button on her top. "…uh…"

She actually starts laughing again. "You never could figure it out, could you?" As she says so, she reaches to undo it herself.

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, my fingers aren't built like yours."

She turns her eyes to mine again. I find myself searching her emerald irises, watching where the shades of green shift and curve in a distinctive pattern. Neither of us looks away, even as she uses one hand to pull off my glove and tenderly caress the hand left exposed, feeling where all three fingers silently arch into talons. Then she foregoes completely what I was attempting to do and brings my hand under her top to rest against her side. "Yeah, I noticed." She presses my hand to her flesh even closer before letting her own hand fall away. She doesn't even seem to care that human skin is so much more pliable than turians' and the talons tight against the edge of her waist could carve right through it with too much pressure. Mostly because she trusts me enough to know I would never hurt her. And loves the feeling contact like this brings forth too much for it to make a difference.

When she moves close enough to rest her head against mine, I use the hand not fixed along her waistline to pull her to and kiss her. Not the same fiery passionate embrace we've been caught up in for the past five-minutes-or-whatever but a simple adoring convergence meant to tell her exactly what my words say the second we pull apart: "I love you, Sara Shepard."

She smiles softly as she places one hand on my scars, a touch I know by heart and love with all my soul. "I love you, Garrus Vakarian." She says it the same way she did the first time—that day on the Presidium. There's no denying how much she means it. How much she feels for me what I do for her.

Next thing I know, the lines between us disappear absolutely and we're locked together, letting that love take over our actions. I don't bother trying to regain control. I just spend every second engraving every aspect of this embrace to my memory while I still can. I let her fill my every sense, so pure and passionate and wonderful that I'm almost convinced this has to be a dream. But even if it is, it's the best one I've ever had.

And I never want to wake up.

 _Midnight…_

We stopped moving about 20 minutes ago. We're still holding tight to each other, her leaning against me and me with one hand softly stroking her hair, though we simply lay here like that, nestled under the covers. She's so close to me that I can feel her lungs expand and contract with every breath, feel every gentle pound of her heart, feel the warmth echoing through every inch of her. It's beyond comforting. It's like we've both finally found some sense of peace.

"The only problem with this?" she sighs, "We're eventually going to have to get up."

I have to smile. "Let's just hold off 'eventually' as long as we can, then."

I hear her let off the beginnings of a laugh and I can practically see her smile. I don't look, though. I'm content right where I am. "It's kind of funny, really. For years, I told myself I'd never fall in love. But even before we ever met, some part of me was dying to fall in love with you."

Wow. Somehow, we've reached the point where she's almost capable of finding words for emotions I never could describe. "Yeah. Don't humans say something about 'finding the missing piece of your heart'?"

"Something like that, I guess. I suppose that means you're mine." She then pulls away from me enough to bring her eyes to mine again, smiling softly as one hand traces my scars—I don't even think she has to watch to do it anymore, she knows them so well. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, Garrus. No matter what happens, I want you to know that."

Now that I'm looking at her eyes, I lose the will to move at all. Whether in a hallucination or real life, she has a way of getting to me. I might never understand it. But at times like this, I couldn't care less. "I feel the same way about you."

She smiles so brightly that the spark comes back through her emerald eyes. Then she closes them and leans back into me. But the hand she has pressed to my scars only moves as her fingers smoothly glide across them.

I return to my previous position in response, my hand unconsciously continuing its pattern in her hair. Five seconds later, I move just enough closer to her to whisper into her ear. "I love you."

She doesn't respond audibly and I can't see it if she smiles, but I feel her light up inside. Then I feel it as she slowly fades to sleep—her steady breathing softens and her heartbeat slows to a rhythmic thumping. As she falls into it, her fingers gradually stop moving and curl up beside me, but I don't let them move otherwise. Or stop my own hand's calming motions.

I spend the next several minutes simply lying here beside her, taking in the feeling of her sleeping form pressed against me. At one point, I look down at her, as beautiful as ever, and find myself moving just slightly closer to her. I can't imagine going a single night without this anymore.

 _"I can't go a night without you…"_

The memory, still only a few hours fresh, strikes a nerve within me. For two months now, I've had her and been plotting some way to ensure that we spend the rest of our lives together. …why not take the next step?

 _"If I had my way, you'd really be my family already…"_

I shake that memory back. I don't want to remember the days I lost her, I want to remember…

 _"No, I think we're going to beat the Reapers back into whatever black hole they crawled out of. Then we're going to retire somewhere warm and tropical and live off the royalties from the vids. Maybe even find out what a turian-human baby looks like."_

I smile at that memory, holding tight to my _kalwen_ as I do. I want us to live out that dream more than anything. And if losing her taught me anything, it's that I have no reason to hold back and plenty of reason not to wait.

She's told me a lot more about her life on Earth in the past two months than she ever told anyone in the last 15 years. She was never bound to anyone for any reason, she learned how to read people and not to trust them, she learned how to survive but half the time wondered if the life she was living was worth it. Every story she gave about her life as an orphan made me want to do everything in my power to chase those memories away. She deserves better than what life has given her. After she joined the Alliance, she turned into a hero of the entire galaxy. But she means so much more to me than that. She deserves a lot more than I can give her, but all either of us wants is… _this_. Which means there's no reason not to follow through.

 _One last line left to cross. Just have to make sure we get the chance to._

I don't think about the risks we're facing, though. I think about what'd be ahead for us if we finally found a way to "cash in on those retirement plans." Those thoughts are what finally lead me to sleep…

…

…until we're both shocked awake by a vibration accompanied by a light beeping sound. Someone's trying to call her.

Shepard groans, rubbing her eyes. "Why do they always call an hour before I can wake up myself?" With a sigh, she turns on her omni-tool and answers the call. "Shepard."

 _"It's Miranda. I found something in that data you sent. We're almost to the Citadel, we'll meet you on the strip like you suggested."_

"Alright. See you then." She disconnects. "Guess trying to catch that extra hour now is out of the question…" She tosses the covers aside and forces herself back to her feet. Though she doesn't fight it this time when I keep a hold on her hand. On the contrary, she turns to smile at me and gives my hand a light squeeze. "…unless, of course, you want to give this one more go."

"What I wouldn't give…" I smirk as she leans back over. As she smirks back, I reach to kiss her one more time.

"Come on," she says, "Don't wanna keep the others waiting." Then she pulls away and walks off.

I watch her go before turning to get up myself. The subtle references to guilt and buried fear that were resounding in her every step have been completely replaced by the familiar confident, determined stride I always saw in the days we were hunting Saren and even the days before the suicide mission. Guess she's back. The thought makes me smile again. She's getting better with every day we spend together.

…and she didn't wake up last night from some panic-inducing nightmare. That's the first time since she came back to me that she's actually slept through the night. It's probably too much to hope for thinking that's a sign that she's well and truly herself again. But it is most definitely a sign that what's been worsening for two months is finally winding down. Maybe we really will get a chance to find that peace we've been fighting so hard for.

Once she's out of sight, I convince myself to get back on my feet. I've got no reason not to expect trouble when we meet up, so I throw my armor back on before doing anything else. After I've done that, I turn to leave the bedroom and join Shepard downstairs—wait a minute. I backtrack a step and make sure I just saw what I think I did. …and I definitely did. "…huh."

"Something wrong?" Shepard asks as she steps back in.

"No, I just can't believe I never noticed this before."

She follows my eyes and sees what I just found. Over the weapons bench, she had hung a bow and a small rack of arrows. "Oh. Right. I almost forgot about that, actually."

"Truth be told, I never would've pegged you for this. In fact, after Korlus, one of the main reasons I got convinced we were fighting another clone was because you were using a bow at all."

"Yeah," she winces, "Like I said, I hadn't used one in about 25 years and I was hesitant to mess with anything from my so-called childhood. But I found a set at some shop on the strip after our 'date' at the casino and made it a temporary hobby to tinker with the supplies whenever I got the chance." She steps over to cautiously take one of the arrows off the rack, turning it in her hands. "And if there's anything I learned from living off scraps for 15 years, it's how to tinker. All those specialized arrows the Shadows had me using—the explosive and concussive ones? I actually made a few of those myself."

I look at her in amazement. "Really? I didn't know you were a techie."

"Well, I'm not proficient like you are, if that's what you're thinking, but I know my way around my weapons."

"Can't say I ever doubted that."

She smirks. "So I've heard." She looks down at the arrow in her hand, running her finger over it. "I did basically the same thing here first and color-coded the arrows for what I did—red for incendiary, orange for concussive, blue for sonic, purple for explosive, etc."

I reach over and take the arrow from her, comparing it to the others on the rack. I can see where the coloring differs, on the fins at the ends of the shafts. The one I'm now holding has black ones, which apparently means she never messed with it at all. "So do these things actually serve a purpose or what?"

"If you're that curious about the mechanics, maybe I should just teach you."

Hesitant just at the thought of it, I quickly hold the arrow back out to her. "Yeah, I'll stick with my rifles, thanks."

She gives me a look as she takes the arrow back. "The fletching, by the way, is what makes it aerodynamically stable, keeps it flying straight. They do the same thing with rockets." She steps over to place the arrow back on the rack. "Back in the old days, they made them out of bird feathers—of course, that was back when the shafts were made out of wood instead of metallic polymers, so…" Then she looks at me and stops talking, which makes me realize I'm looking at her somewhere between interest and amusement. "…what?"

I smirk to myself as I realize what the answer is: "I think I just found out what goes through your head when I'm talking about calibrating the battery."

She answers by shoving me back. "Shut up."

I hold back a laugh before turning to glance over the rack. The ones she mentioned are there and I can basically tell what the others are—white must be cryo, yellow is probably electric or something similar, and green would be…OK, that one I can't tell. Curious, I reach over to take it down and search it. "What's this one?"

She takes one look and snatches it. "Don't touch that one!" She holds it out cautiously as if she's afraid to touch it herself. "…it's poison."

At the use of the word, I instantly take a step back out of some kind of reflex. She visibly flinches at my reaction before putting the arrow back in its place. Poison arrows are kind of a soft spot for both of us considering the Shadows sent her after our whole team with a quiver full of them and the poison they used on me during that fight almost got me killed. Several times.

She sighs sadly as the memories take hold again. "Garrus, look…I never meant to—"

Knowing what's coming and what it did to us both yesterday, I silence the worries as soon as I can the only way I know how: I take hold of her and pull her in to kiss her.

She gladly responds in kind as long as she can before she's forced to push me back breathlessly. "…are you just gonna do that every time now?"

Much as the question makes me smile, I give the most honest answer I can: "If it helps at all, then yeah."

"Well, I'm certainly not gonna complain."

That draws out the laugh I held back earlier, which in turn makes her smile again.

She starts to wrap her arms around me, as if to say she wants to stay like this as long as possible, then dismisses it. "No. I'd hate to get caught up in this again only for the others to call us in and break it up. We'd better head out."

I understand her reasoning, but I still hesitate to let go of her. "Right. Let's go, then." I start to walk out and head downstairs.

She steps ahead and reaches to open the door…stops for about three seconds…and instead hits the lock before turning back to me, a familiar enticing gleam in her eyes. "Five more minutes couldn't hurt, though." Then she reaches to grab my hand again and pull me over.

And I do all I can to make those five minutes count.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – Shepard

I've started to notice a pattern. I'm now convinced Garrus is the only one who can really make me feel alive. Sometimes, he's the only one who can show me I have a reason to live. The truth is that I consider my squad-mates and Joker and even some of the other crewmen (like Daniels and Donnelly) the closest thing I've ever had to a family. But, when it comes down to it, to the deepest parts of me, Garrus is the only person I've ever truly loved.

We have all night together and we definitely make the most of it. We spend the first two hours wrapped up in each other, and my focus blurs so much that all I'm aware of is the overwhelming pleasure of holding tight to him as we kiss. The only reason we don't keep going is because my heart is pounding so hard I'm worried it might overexert if I don't stop and catch my breath. Clearly, though, he has more stamina than I give him credit for, because he simply turns his attention to my neck and won't pull away. Not that I care to try pushing him off. On the contrary, I revel in the feeling of his ongoing affections. As I steady my burning lungs, I take his hand and lead him to rest it over my stomach so I can softly run my own hand across it, my eyes closed to take in every sensation this moment brings forth.

At some point, he gets up and leaves the room, staying sure to kiss me one more time before walking away. I watch him step out, my head suddenly spinning with the words he gave me earlier. Before I see where that's leading, one thing in particular strikes me. His idea of what would've happened if I had taken that hit on Earth and he was the one to activate the Crucible and stop the Reapers. It would definitely have given the Shadows the opening they were looking for and I definitely would've been vulnerable. But…when I think about it…I don't need to have a nightmare about it to know what would've happened if any of it came to pass.

 _"I think you're going to stand back and watch me and my army of assassins take out every officer left in C-Sec while_ you _kill the Council…or you can stand back and watch everyone you've ever loved die."_

 _I'd strategize the same way, know he'd have me cornered. But just when I'd be on the verge of consideration, pondering whether to give in or risk_ everything _… "…the only person I've ever loved is dead." …I'd pull the trigger._

 _But it wouldn't be that easy. Orion would have his barriers up. "Pity." And he'd still send the signal to kill everyone else I ever in any way cared about and immediately follow it by taking a kill shot at me._

I shake the thought away as best I can. That's one scenario I can put out of my head, knowing it definitely would never have happened. _It's not real. And it never will be._ Just when I convince myself, though, I realize I'm crying. It doesn't matter that my imaginary nightmare isn't real. All that matters is that I've considered what would happen if I lost Garrus. I can't go through that at all. I'd never survive.

Then I hear familiar footsteps approach. He's coming back. I instantly wipe my tears away and wait for him to walk in. When he does, just the sight of him is enough to entirely discharge my fearful deliberation and call back the delight of the love of my life holding me in his arms. The second he's close enough, I grab him by the wrist and yank him over to kiss him. He doesn't pull away for one second, even as he crawls under the covers beside me and lets me wrap my arms around him.

By midnight, we've resolved to simply lie here together, as close as we can get. The only movement between us is his hand stroking my hair. Caught up in this perfect moment, I find myself confessing emotions I never knew I had words for, brought to the edge of perfect happiness simply by being here with him. From the way he reacts, I can tell it's the same for him.

Eventually, I pull back enough to meet his starry blue eyes and get lost in the sight. So lost that I don't even look when my hand reaches up to his scars and my fingers start to follow them. Apparently, I don't need to look. I know them better than my own these days. That knowledge makes me realize what I've always known all over again and, this time, tell him so: "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, Garrus. No matter what happens, I want you to know that."

Everything in him lights up somehow at those words. He doesn't move, though. As if he's afraid this is a dream. I couldn't blame him for thinking so. "I feel the same way about you."

I can't keep myself from smiling at those words. Joy consumes my thoughts and I end up retreating back into him, leaning even closer but not allowing my hand to move from caressing his scars.

He gladly reassumes his position as well, only shifting so that he can whisper into my ear the three words that I've always dreaded yet longed to hear: "I love you."

Hearing his voice say that to me, weighted down by the most emotion I've ever known a turian to show, makes my heart beat just a little harder and every part of me spark to life. It echoes through my mind and sends a sense of calm flooding through me that soothes me to sleep.

And resounds through my dreams, chasing them all away.

For once, the nightmares aren't what wake me up. This time, I wake up from a light vibration around my left wrist accompanied by a (to my sleeping senses) noticeably sharp beeping sound. I groan at the unwanted wake-up call, not bothering to keep myself from complaining about it before answering.

 _"It's Miranda. I found something in that data you sent. We're almost to the Citadel, we'll meet you on the strip like you suggested."_

"Alright. See you then." I disconnect, the commander part of me thankful for the warning and curious what she found…even as the rest of me is still upset she felt the need to wake us up and say that. "Guess trying to catch that extra hour now is out of the question…" After I've said so, I force myself to get up. But Garrus still doesn't let go of my hand. And I don't make any attempt to make him. I finally turn to him and smile, even going so far as to give the hand clutching mine a light squeeze as a signal not to let go for anything. "…unless, of course, you want to give this one more go."

"What I wouldn't give…" he smirks as I lean over, drawing one from me before reaching to kiss me one more time.

As much as I'd love to (as I'm _dying_ to) go through with it, we still have a job to do. "Come on. Don't wanna keep the others waiting." So I pull away and walk out of the room. I move through the apartment, getting myself ready for whatever's waiting for us out there, but my mind is still back in that room with him. I just can't get him out of my head.

I toss myself a snide smile at the thought. When I was 15—when I was _30_ —I would've called that a distraction, just another way to get myself killed. Now I couldn't care less. He's been my strength more than a few times and far from a distraction when the situation demands. If anything, this love has saved my life. More than once.

I remember when I first started wondering what it was I was feeling for him and how I could possibly have let it get that deep—and with a _turian_ , no less. In my some-would-say-desperation, I started scrolling through old human vids and novels and such in my free time, seeing if they were more right than I'd given them credit for. I still remember what convinced me: "You know you love someone when you can't stop thinking about them." Couldn't deny that.

When I come to a point at which I can stop for a moment, I breathe deep, close my eyes, and let my thoughts drift so they can settle from this aching restlessness before something happens. The act lets one memory in particular take hold entirely.

 _"Is there a reason you snuck a message into the battery to meet here instead of just asking?" Garrus asked as he found me in a passageway on the Citadel the day I met the asari Councilor and got the tip about Thessia._

 _"Just wanted to make sure we were alone," I shrugged as I started leading the way through the passage itself, "As far as everyone's concerned, we're just on shore leave. They shouldn't be bothering us."_

 _"Fine, but why here?"_

 _"Have you ever actually been this way before?"_

 _"No, it was one of the 'off-limits' sections even in my C-Sec days."_

 _"Exactly. Since our shooting contest on the Presidium made it pretty clear where we stand on 'off-limits' date sites, I figured I'd show you one of my favorites for a change."_

 _"You mean you've actually been back here before?" Much as he tried to keep it level, the sub-harmonics in his voice betrayed his apparent surprise._

 _"I was on the Citadel for a month between assignments not long after Akuze," I explained as I checked the area, trying to remember which way led to the keeper tunnels and which way would lead to the destination I was now searching for, "My…let's call it an 'explorative nature' I picked up on Earth…" I then checked a nearby door and found it led to a duct entrance. That let me regain my bearings and sent me heading down the passage just a little ways farther. "…took over a few times, had me sneaking around to see what I could find. Lucky me, I still had my sneaking skills in place, so no one ever caught me." It was at that moment I located the door I was looking for. I had to press a little harder than I was expecting to get it open and, since it was originally meant for the keepers, I basically had to crawl through, but what I found on the other side was worth the effort. "…and I always did have a knack for finding a great view."_

 _It was basically a balcony on the very edge of Tayseri Ward, overlooking the entire Citadel and exposing its smoky purple backdrop of the Serpent Nebula. The web of lights cast over the five petal-like Wards connected by the Presidium ring seemed to be an intricate golden design etched across a strikingly beautiful cloud of stardust—even a_ krogan _couldn't deny that it was truly a magnificent sight._

 _Garrus seemed to agree, if the look in his eyes when he caught sight of the view in question was anything to go by. "…wow. I'll say you do."_

 _I smirked. "Only downside is that the atmosphere is a lot thinner out here, so it'll get pretty hard to breathe within 15 minutes, but I brought breathers if we want to keep it up a while longer."_

 _"We could just take a holo—it'll last longer."_

 _I couldn't keep myself from letting off a small laugh. "Fair point."_

 _After a few seconds, he turned his attention from the view to me. But the look in his eyes didn't change. "So is there an occasion for all this or are you just trying to one-up me?"_

 _I fought back the urge to smile again as I found my answer. "Actually, there kind of is an occasion." I turned to him, leaning against the wall. "Three years back from two days ago, Sovereign and the geth attacked Eden Prime. …which means it was three years ago today…that we met."_

 _I don't know when turian body language started to become familiar to me, but I firmly believed by that point that I was fluent in everything Garrus Vakarian could say however he managed to do it. All the movements and casual shifts he made in that moment suggested astonishment or amazement—thoughts along the lines of_ Has it really been three years? _"…wow." He cast his glance back down at the Citadel around us, probably reliving some of his past memories of it. "We've certainly come a long way since then."_

 _I smirked at the comment. "Yeah. On several levels."_

 _That drew him to laugh. Briefly, but enough to turn my smirk into a real cheerful smile. "Guess you could say that again." He then turned his attention entirely to me, leaning against the wall. The casual stance reminded me almost exactly of all the times I came back from a mission with the others only to find him waiting by the fish tank in my cabin, looking for just a few moments alone with me—a somewhat annoying gesture to some but as endearing as they come for me. "So are we going to commemorate this momentous occasion or are we just enjoying the view?"_

 _"Why can't we do both?"_

 _"Do we have time for an actual 'date' this time? We do still have a galaxy in peril and all."_

 _"We don't have any distress calls to check on at the moment and that artifact on Thessia isn't going anywhere. I'd say no one's gonna miss us for more than an hour." I sighed. "Plus, I'm sick of putting us on hold to worry about everyone else's problems."_

 _The look in his eyes turned to utter bewilderment._

 _"What?"_

 _"Nothing, it's just…I never thought I'd hear you say something like that."_

 _"Yeah, well, I've been thinking 'galaxy first' for over a decade and I'm hoping I've earned the right to be selfish for one day." I reached over to take his hand, not letting my gaze drift from his starry blue eyes, still piercing but brightened by the nebula surrounding us. "You know I love you, Garrus. And I've never felt that for anyone before. This, what I have for you, it's…well, stronger than I ever believed I_ could _feel for anyone. So you have a pretty special place in my heart now, and it won't let me stop thinking about you. When it comes down to it, I'll end up having to make room for everyone else."_

 _The look in his eyes shifted more with every word, fading between 100 different emotions—99 of which I'd never seen on any turian but him. He was special, one reason I cared so much about him. Clearly, he thought something similar about me, because the way the hand not clasped in mine slid up my arm to my shoulder insinuated a unique sort of admiration._

 _I sighed and confessed a_ lot _more than I originally intended: "There's about 20 years of my life I don't talk about and hundreds of memories and thoughts and emotions I've buried so deep—I don't even talk about them, let alone show them to anyone. But I'm ready to show you. I want to share my whole life with you while I still can. This war is taking too much from us already and I need what we have to hold on. Because I can't do any of this without you. The truth is…I can't carry it like everyone is hoping—believing—I will. My planet, my whole species, the entire galaxy depending on me? I can't take that kind of pressure._ No one _could." As the hand pressed to my shoulder slid up to my face, support and comfort turning to sheer affection, I let my own slowly make its way up his arm to his scars. "When I'm out there saving the galaxy, I'm only thinking about the people I care about. …I'm fighting for you."_

 _Even as my hand found its way to the series of marks across his face, he softly tightened his hold on me, the talons pressed to the side of my face digging just slightly into my flesh. I leaned into it slightly before he could think about letting go. The gesture was likely what finally led him to pull me in. I gladly complied, enjoying every second of the kiss that followed. When he attempted to pull away, I pressed my own hand just slightly closer to him, keeping him close as long as I could. After a few seconds, I brought myself to open my eyes again and found his gleaming at me. "I'd say you have earned a day for yourself." He took a step back, keeping his hands against me. "Alright, I'm all yours. What do we do now?"_

 _I smiled, cancelling out his step back with my own step forward. "Just hold me for a minute."_

 _He smiled softly before pulling me close, wrapping his arms tight around me._

 _I gladly leaned into him, returning the embrace. One hand wrapped around him to make sure he didn't let go of me and the other pressed in just the right place to feel his heartbeat, I laid my head against his shoulder and looked out at the view of the Citadel around us, only now seeing stars glistening in the distance beyond the nebula itself._

 _I don't remember much about the rest of the day, not near as clearly as our "date" on that balcony. But I can exactly recall waking up the next morning to find a note and a small box on the pillow beside my own. I curiously reached to look at the note._

 _Happy anniversary._

 _I couldn't keep myself from smiling before setting the note aside and opening the box. I then carefully pulled out the contents in wonder: a small sculpted star. I took a moment to look it over before placing it back in the box and setting it on my bedside table. Right as I started to get out of bed, though, I noticed something about the note. I picked it back up and turned it over, finding that there was a second part of it._

 _I'm fighting for you, too._

I smile vibrantly at what I now realize is one of my fondest memories. I still remember bringing that box with me the next time we came back to the Citadel, placing it carefully—caringly—on a shelf in the— I freeze at the thought. I was sleeping across from it all night. Brightening with the idea, I head for the stairs to go fetch it.

But I come back to the bedroom right as Garrus notices something else I forgot I put in the "closet": an archery set I picked up at some random store on the strip the day we had our "first date." I gladly indulge his curiosity, though, explaining everything he questions. It's only when I start unconsciously reciting the history of fletching that I realize he's smirking at me the same way I do when he starts going on about his calibrations. I answer by shoving him playfully, silencing his attempts at banter. As he turns his attention to glancing casually over the rack on the wall of all the arrows I modified, I turn my own attention to what I came here for, finally catching sight of my prize at the armor locker.

"What's this one?"

I look back and find him inspecting one arrow in particular. One that, at the sight of it, instantly sparks a second-long flash of all the days spent at the mercy of the Orpheus Protocol. "Don't touch that one!" I instantly snap as I snatch it back from him, holding it out as cautiously as I can so that neither of us unwittingly touches it and sets it off. Once my racing mind calms down enough to realize how the panic could be interpreted, I force myself to say it out loud: "…it's poison."

The way he flinches sends a surge of pain through my heart even as I place the arrow back on the rack. I might not be the one that originally gave him reason to dread exposure to deadly venom, but I was the one who made sure what wormed its way into his veins was strong enough to kill him. I was the one that weakened him, made him suffer for days, left him clawing his way back from the brink of death and dreaming of me the whole time.

I clench my fists and make an effort to steady my breathing. But I can't shake away the remorse I'm drowning in every second I think of how I hurt him. I finally sigh and turn to him again. "Garrus, look…I never meant to—"

He instantly sees where I'm going with this and takes action, grabbing hold of me and dragging me in to kiss me before my emotional state can reach overwhelming.

I gladly return it, not even noticing how my thoughts cloud until all my worries are chased away. When my lungs force me to draw back, I'm left with no sense of the penitence paralyzing me only a moment ago but an overpowering sense of longing to return to his loving grasp for as long as I possibly can. "…are you just gonna do that every time now?" I finally smirk.

He smiles at the question, keeping close to me. "If it helps at all, then yeah."

"Well, I'm certainly not gonna complain."

He answers that with a laugh, enough to make me smile wholeheartedly.

I start to move closer to him, to wrap my arms around him and hope to spend all day pressed tight against him. Then some part of my brain makes me remember the squad waiting for us and I force myself to back off. "No. I'd hate to get caught up in this again only for the others to call us in and break it up. We'd better head out." After he hesitantly agrees, I head over to the door. I start to hit it…and then a thought occurs to me and I lock the door instead so I can turn back to my love and voice it: "Five more minutes couldn't hurt, though." With that said, I grab him by the hand and pull him over, not even minding when the resulting rapturous embrace has me pinned to the wall. I let him in completely, the walls I put up decades ago long since abandoned, and he returns the favor, trusting and loyal as ever. By the time we pull apart, I've reached the point where I instantly ache to dive back in. Instead, I remind myself of our current situation and, with a sigh, reach around to open the door before he even steps back. "Alright. Let's go." I then turn through the door and step down the stairs to the entrance.

But even as I reach to hit the door, I feel his arms wrap around my waist and find myself closing my eyes and leaning into him. "You're sure we can't spare another five minutes?" his voice sounds in my ear again, tempting enough in itself to make me consider.

I still somehow manage to keep my senses intact, reaching over my shoulder to press one hand to him without even opening my eyes. "I wish. But the others need us." I then turn in his grasp enough to meet his eyes one more time. "We'll just have to come back when this is over." After saying so, I kiss his scars one more time and open the door. I do, however, consent to keep my hand in his for the entirety of the walk out.

Ten minutes later, we come to a warehouse at the end of the strip and send a signal through EDI's COMM network to the others, telling them to meet us here. Within five minutes, they all find their way to us.

"Shepard," Wrex nods in greeting as he steps in, the rest of our old squad-mates close behind.

"Wrex," I nod back before turning to the others, "Alright. What do we know so far?"

"The Shadows are as relentless as cockroaches," Jack growls.

I give her a look. "OK, let me rephrase: what do we know that we didn't know beforeyesterday?"

Miranda, of course, steps up. "I looked over that data you sent me. Most of it was nothing new, but I noticed something odd when I compared what Tali received with what we recovered from their networks. Those bases that went active? While the locations aren't given in the files, the intel indicates the Shadows cleared out themselves when the territories became Reaper-occupied during the war. They never moved back in after the Crucible went off. Until a few days ago, when the systems were all brought back online by a high-level access code."

That catches my attention. "How high-level?"

"Very. Why? Mean something to you?"

"The Shadows had a very distinct ranking system—only three levels to speak of. Orion was obviously the highest and all the grunts he sent at you were low priority. But the midlevel ranks were Orion's lieutenants and he only ever had three. …one of which was the asari that died putting my mind back."

"So we're dealing with one of the other two," Ash reasons, "All we have to do is figure out who it is and where those bases are and we can take them out for good."

I turn to Liara. "Did you and EDI get anything off the gun?"

"Yes," Liara answers, "Though the results were…odd. The custom modifications led to a dealer on Aephus. But the weapons dealer in question also supplies ammunitions for the Aephus police force."

"So the same guy arming the cops was arming assassins? Something tells me he didn't know who was buying his equipment."

"Someone who didn't want him to find out, it seems. He was killed five hours before the attack in the markets, shortly before Tali received the Shadows' data." As she says so, she calls up the case file for the murder on her omni-tool.

I glance over it. As I do, I notice something odd. "Liara, would you mind sending me that file?"

Liara gives me a curious look before complying.

"None of this is making sense," I sum up our findings as I wait for Liara's transmission to go through, "Two months after we took out the majority of their forces and their leader himself, what's left of the Shadows activate bases they abandoned a year and a half ago at the command of one of Orion's lieutenants, start trading with police weapon suppliers, and then go to all the trouble of setting a trap for the seven of us but spread out for the rest of you?"

"Some trap," James smirks, "We went in unarmed and walked out alive."

I consent to that point before calling up my omni-tool and looking over the file. I instantly catch sight of what I thought was odd. The dealer wasn't shot but stabbed. In the shoulder. Even blood loss shouldn't have been fatal from a wound like that, but he still died within minutes. _…wait a minute…_ The others start talking this over, but I simply focus on the readings the Aephus police force was able to gather on the murder weapon. The knife used was also custom, as indicated by metal shards left by contact with the victim's bones, and treated with a viral—

My eyes widen as I freeze in shock. _Oh no._ "Garrus…" I cut through the others' conversation, letting a slight ring of urgency into my voice as I turn to them, "…do these readings look familiar to you?"

Garrus turns to glance over the readings in question. When he sees what I mean, his shock goes even deeper than mine. That's all the confirmation I need.

Whoever killed the dealer on Aephus used the same poison the Shadows used on Garrus.

"Crap," he groans, "Don't tell me that means they're gonna—"

"Shepard!" EDI suddenly cuts in, "We've been detected!"

"What?!" I instantly demand.

"I picked up on Shadow transmissions during the assault in the markets yesterday. More are establishing contact in the immediate vicinity."

"How much time do we have before they get here?!"

That's when gunshots break through the windows and the attack starts.

EDI looks my way as she steps back into cover. "None."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 – Garrus

 _Maybe Shepard's right. Maybe we should stop leaving the ship._

That thought strikes my mind furiously as I duck behind a post to dodge the incoming fire. The detective in me is working away trying to figure out how the Shadows found us so easily. The soldier in me is searching for some way to head off the attack before they can cause any damage. The rest of me is watching the others to make sure no one—especially Sara—is hit and that all of them find cover in time. We have some decent luck on that last one, but a hard time with the second and no way of discerning the first.

Shepard glances quickly over her makeshift cover only to be forced back down by a high-velocity round. She growls to herself for a moment (a motion I can certainly second) before turning to me. "We need to find some way to get in close for any counterattack to be effective!"

"If you tell me to distract them so you can jump them headfirst again, you're on your own!" I instantly snap.

"Are you kidding?! Any clear path is too exposed this time!"

"Nice plan getting us all in the same place, Shepard!" Jack groans, "Fish in a barrel for the expert assassins!"

"Shut up and kill something!" As she says so, she reaches into her boot and pulls out a gun that'd been on the weapons bench in her (well, _our_ now, I guess) apartment.

"Garrus!" Liara calls. When I turn her way, she tosses over the sniper rifle Shepard pulled off the assassin she took down yesterday.

I gladly catch it, nodding a quick thanks before getting ready for a fight. Once I'm in a position to, I lean out of cover long enough to locate the Shadows. The second I get a clear shot, I take it. The Shadow I got a headshot at drops immediately, but all the others immediately turn fire in my direction, forcing me to duck back behind cover. That plays to our advantage, though, since it gives me a chance to switch thermal clips and tell the others "Ten Shadows on the far wall, four in each side window!"

"Got it!" Adjusting her aim to the new bearings, Shepard turns right to one of the windows and lets off four shots before ducking back down, taking out all the Shadows stationed at that point and only taking shield damage.

"Nice one, Lola!" James smirks, "My turn?"

Shepard smirks back. "Go for it."

James then pulls out a grenade, arms it, and rolls from his cover to mine, tossing the grenade at the next window-full of Shadows. The resulting explosion takes out all four at once. "Yes!"

I just look at this in amazement. "How'd you get a grenade past the docking bay?"

"Funny story, actually—"

Then the Shadows at the far window fire off an explosive of their own, taking out our cover and throwing us forward.

" _Samara_!" Shepard instantly calls when she sees we're both exposed, unarmed, and under threat of immediate attack.

Samara instantly responds, forming a barrier around us just before the bullets start flying our way.

"They're pushing forward! Don't let them gain any ground!" She promptly tags a target and assigns it: "Liara, Miranda!"

Liara ducks out of cover just long enough to set off a singularity at her appointed target, immobilizing a few of the Shadows. Miranda then fires a warp attack at the singularity itself and causes a biotic detonation that throws them into the Shadows closest to them, taking out everyone caught in the blast. The two of them then take hold of the fallen assassins' weapons and bring them over, arming the squad.

I take the chance our biotic teammates grant us to recover the sniper rifle I dropped. When I turn to take it back, though, I catch sight of something. One hand already wrapped around the trigger, I look up and see an archer aiming at us. "Shepard!"

Shepard instantly catches on. Turning her aim up without even moving from her cover, she fires right at the archer's leg, causing them to drop forward and tumble down to her level. She drags the body over so she isn't exposed when she searches it, tosses the downed assassin's COMM unit to EDI, and retrieves the bow.

I make my way over to her, arming the sniper rifle for another round as James gets to the others and lets Samara send the barrier's energy slamming into the assassins getting too close. "Round two, then?"

She smirks at me. "If you're talking about the fight, then yeah. It's not a good time for—" Before she can finish bantering, the bow she's arming lights up and starts beeping.

I blink at this. "…is that supposed to happen?"

"Uh…no!" She quickly throws it at the Shadows. Two seconds later, it explodes, too. "They booby-trapped them with biometric scanners?!"

"Guess they knew you'd try that."

"Well, that's gonna complicate things." With a sigh, she returns to her pistol, switching thermal clips. Then she looks thoughtfully at the floor for a second… "…remind me to have EDI scan one of those later. We can use that."

That statement is immediately followed by a rain of bullets against our cover, forcing us to duck down lower.

"I take the 15 in the front, you take the 20 in the back?"

"On it." With that, I cock the gun in my hands, lean against our cover again, and start sniping down the Shadows aiming at us. Since the entire squad is helping us now, the fight quickly dies down.

Shepard, naturally, fires the last shot. She quickly scans the area. "All targets down." Only after she's said so does she come out of her cover, the rest of us shortly following. "Not just relentless but more ruthless. Lucky for us, that also means they're reckless. This whole assault was poorly strategized."

"Yet they still set up their equipment to make sure none of us could touch it," I point out, gesturing to the archer Sara took out.

Shepard glances at the body, too. "Right. So anything we get our hands on is gonna explode if we don't—" Then she realizes something. "Wait. EDI?"

EDI steps closer…holding the COMM unit Shepard picked off the body in question. "I was able to analyze their communications feed. They blocked it out when we terminated this wave, but I can still use the encryption key to hack their systems if we can establish access—"

Shepard finally steps over and takes the COMM. "Why isn't this rigged like the bow was? Surely, they must have known we'd—" Then the COMM starts giving the same signs of detonation the bow gave off before, forcing Shepard to toss it, too. Two seconds later, it explodes. After a few more seconds thinking this over, she realizes what just happened: "It is biometric sensors. Synthetics don't apply." She turns back to the others. "Start looking for something that could tell us what they're up to, but nobody but EDI touch _anything_!"

Once we've all agreed, we spread out.

"Please don't tell me I was right," Tali sighs as she heads to one corner, "and they've hacked our COMMs."

"I would have noticed any breach in security," EDI points out.

"Judging by the specs I pulled from their data," Miranda counters, "they have ways around your systems. They somehow managed to secure copies of your core programming from Cerberus infiltration similar to how they infiltrated Liara's network."

"Speaking of which," Liara adds, "I never did figure out which agents were spying on my data streams. They might still be connected."

"But they couldn't have found us here that way unless they did hack our COMMs," Jack says, "because surely the Shadow Broker isn't stupid enough to advertise her own location. _Right_?!"

"Of course not! Even the Shadow Broker's agents know nothing of the Broker himself. …or…herself…in this case."

"Well, they found us somehow!" Ashley snaps as she heads to the center of what was a battleground only a moment ago, "And I don't see how—" Suddenly, a sharp, metallic _SNAP!_ rings through the warehouse and Ashley cries out, dropping to the floor.

"What happened?!" Wrex asks as we get moving.

The second we're close enough, though, we can see what happened. Buried under the carnage, a Shadow planted a trap that seems to be a cross between a land mine and a bear trap. Ash apparently stepped on it and set it off. Her ankle is caught in it (thankfully, it's more of a shackle than the teeth most traps are known for, so she won't come out with a broken leg) and it's armed.

"No one touch it!" Shepard rushes over, getting on the ground by her friend as I take her other side, "Ash, don't move!"

"Wasn't planning on it," Ashley growls back.

I quickly start scanning over it with my omni-tool, searching for the mechanisms operating—anything to show us how to shut it down. "It's not on a timer, it's synched to a remote detonator. I might be able to trace it—"

"Don't bother!" Grunt snaps. He then draws his shotgun and fires over our heads. The bullet flies up to one of the windows that got smashed in the fight, taking out the shields on a just-appearing Shadow…carrying a detonator. Before any of us can get a second shot in, the assassin rushes out of view.

Shepard instantly jumps to her feet to run after the fleeing Shadow. "EDI, see if you can disarm it! We're going after them!" The second she's said so, she races up a stack of boxes and jumps through the window to the rooftops and walkways outside, instantly following the Shadow's trail.

I groan even as I follow her. "…this is going to be difficult…" Still, I make my way up after her and start following close behind, not sure—and not caring—who's behind me and who's staying with EDI and Ashley.

Sara, luckily, has no trouble keeping up with the Shadow for the first part of the chase, and I, fortunately, have no trouble keeping up with her. Eventually, I catch up with her when she jumps down a level from one roof to another. But when we help each other back to our feet, the Shadow's already gaining ground.

"We're gonna lose him!" I tell her as we start running as fast as we can while sticking together, "We have to find some way to cut him off!"

"I've only been this way after falling through a fish tank," she points out, "No time to check for shortcuts then or now! I could do this on Earth, but not with someone right behind me that I don't want to lose track of."

At those words, I grab her by the shoulder and stop running just long enough to stare her down. "Ash is in trouble. Don't hold back."

She looks at me for a moment before nodding. Then she turns back to the Shadow. Between us and our target, there's a vent shaft, a guardrail, and an alleyway too far to jump across. She simply runs for it…flips over the vent shaft, jumps up against the guardrail to swing her legs over it without even breaking her stride, and uses that momentum to make the leap anyway, catching onto a fire escape before falling and racing up it to the roof the Shadow is clearing. Three seconds later, she's gained enough speed to match the assassin's pace and start closing in.

Jacob then comes up to me, clearly having seen that. "…how are we supposed to catch up with her now?"

I sigh. "Just go around—she's got it." After saying so, I move across the roof to the nearest site to cross and follow that way. Shepard and the Shadow are already out of sight by then, but I'm still getting a signal from her transponder, so I start following that. 100 meters later, I catch sight of her again. She's across a whole street (kind of wish I could've seen her cross that one) and closing in on the Shadow at a skycar lot. I pull out the sniper rifle procured from the Shadows and take aim. When I have, I quickly turn on my COMM. "Shepard! I've got a shot!"

 _"Take—!"_

Suddenly, the Shadow crumbles with a hole in their head, the sounds of a gunshot echoing in the far distance.

 _"…uh…that was fast."_

I just look at this in confusion. "…that…wasn't me."

 _"What? Who…?"_ I then see her through the scope as she steps over to the fallen assassin and retrieves the detonator, pulling out the wires. _"OK, EDI, I've disabled it."_

 _"And I have taken apart the trap itself," EDI responds, "Lieutenant-Commander Williams is unharmed and we are headed to your location."_

 _"Alright. …get here fast. All of you."_

 _Ten minutes later…_

We all find Shepard at the skycar lot, still examining the body.

"EDI," Shepard says, taking a step back, "what can you tell me?"

EDI runs a few quick scans of the body. "This shot was made from that rooftop…" She gestures to a building diagonal from this one, the roof a few floors higher than the balcony we're on. "…with an M-98 Widow rifle."

"Using high-powered cryo ammo, if you're looking to be that specific." I don't recognize that voice, so I'm startled enough to instantly look in its direction. A female turian is standing at the entrance we all just came through.

"Uh…" I quickly step up, "I'm sorry, but this guy was trying to kill us, so I'd say—until C-Sec gets here—that makes it _our_ crime scene."

"Except I'm the one who dropped the body, so I'd say that makes it mine." Before saying anymore, she steps past me towards the corpse in question, allowing me to see that she is holding a Widow modded with cryo rounds.

Samara is the one to step up and say what we're all thinking: "Who are you?"

"Irana Zeranos of the Aephus police force. Your attacker here is part of a secret organization that swindled our weapons supplier and killed him. I tracked them here and found them trying to kill you. Care to explain to me the connection?"

"Alright, look," Shepard steps over, "the role of wisecracking, sharpshooting turian cop has already been filled here"—I can't resist a smirk at that one.—"and I have all the info we need on these guys. I can give you what you need to close your case, but beyond that, we—"

Before she can say anymore, she pushes Shepard back and storms over to snatch the rifle I'm holding.

"Hey—!" I start at her.

I don't get the chance to do anything else before she opens it up to expose the wiring and tears out a device I'm pretty certain shouldn't be in there. "Tracer, leading them right to you. How do you think I tracked them here?" With that, she shoves the gun back into my hands and throws the tracer aside before stepping back over to the Shadow corpse.

Shepard looks at this in amazement. "Liara, EDI, how'd you miss that?"

Liara steps over to where Irana dropped the tracer and looks it over herself. "This programming appears similar to the hidden code you said was buried in the Ilium data. Utterly undetectable unless you're searching specifically for it. I'm surprised the Aephus law enforcement would've found it, though."

"Well, for one thing," Irana points out as she searches the body, "it was pretty suspicious that most of the specialized weapons were armed with biometrically-activated detonation sequences but a few weren't. I ran a few more specific scans to see what the real trap was and found that. You probably set it off the second you took it off them. Which, I might say, is a fairly impressive feat in itself."

"Thanks, I'm known for those," Shepard comments passively, "Could you give us a minute?"

"It's a free balcony."

Shepard gives her a sharp glare while she's not looking then steps aside, leading the rest of us to follow until we're out of turian earshot. "Tell me we're not considering letting her tag along."

"I doubt most of us were until you said so," Liara retorts with a knowing look.

"Cut it out, Liara! The 13 of us are all we need."

"Believe me," Wrex groans, "Garrus is enough turian for all of us."

"She seems fairly like an expert detective," Miranda points out, "Never hurts to have one of those around."

"I won't argue with that," Shepard says, "But with Omega clear of them, no one knows more about the Black Shadows than I do."

"We're hardly going to disagree. Still, it never hurts to have a pair of fresh eyes. She might see something we missed. Finding and defeating the Shadows would be easier if we understood their intentions."

"She did pretty much save my life," Ashley adds.

"Not to mention caught something even _EDI_ missed," Tali jumps in, looking over the tracer in question.

Shepard looks in Irana's direction, clearly thinking this over. I recognize the thoughtful, indecisive look in her eyes. Very rarely does she not know what to do; when she does, it usually has to do with people (understandable, I guess). After a few seconds of silence, she turns to look for an opinion she knows she can trust. "Garrus?"

Great, now everyone's looking at me. I just take a moment to think this over, looking back at Irana myself and finding her still going over the downed assassin's gear (careful not to actually touch any of it). Miranda is right, I'll consent to that. And it never hurts to have an extra gun around, especially when they actually know how to use it well. But what if bringing her in makes her a target, too? Or what if there's more to this situation than we can see? Things are bad enough without adding more layers to the chaos. Finally, I sigh and turn back to Shepard, giving her what I know to be the best answer I can: "Your instincts have never steered us wrong before. What are they telling you now?"

She keeps her eyes on mine, considering my answer. When she does look away from me, her gaze moves back to Irana. "Alright, she's helped us on two counts so far. If she gives us a third, we bring her in. Otherwise, we—"

Suddenly, Irana's omni-tool lights up. "I caught a signal!" she calls over to us, "It could lead to their bases, but it's heavily encrypted!"

Four seconds later, all eyes turn to EDI, who said she has the encryption key. EDI simply looks between us for a few more seconds before turning to Shepard.

Shepard groans. I could swear I hear her muttering "The universe hates me." Finally, she sighs and turns back to us. "Fine. I'll go tell her what's going on and we'll head back to the _Normandy_ to follow that signal." With that said, she walks back over to Irana and starts explaining.

I look over at Liara once Shepard is out of reach. "Just out of curiosity, is there anything on her in your network?"

Liara is already searching. "Yes. Her record in law enforcement is fairly impressive. It seems she was also active duty military with the turian hierarchy for about six years before joining the Aephus police, though it doesn't say why she would've left."

"What'd she do for the hierarchy?"

"Covert missions, mostly. Obviously, it's not specified."

After she says so, I turn my gaze to Shepard, who is currently in the process of telling Irana what's happening (or as much as we can share about it). To her benefit, Irana seems unshaken, though she does exhibit some signs of astonishment that no one but another turian would typically notice. In fact, the more I observe the exchange…the more I see similar signs from Shepard—signs of buried emotional reactions that no one but me would usually recognize. She hasn't had to tell the story to anyone since our reunion on Omega and it's never been easy for her to talk about. Clearly, she's not divulging every detail to Irana, but I know her well enough to know that doesn't make it easier. The Shadows have put her through too much. We need to end them. _Now_.

Before I know it, Irana nods in understanding and sets off for the docking bay. As soon as the conversation's over, Shepard looks back at us and nods in her direction, signaling to head out, too. Even as we move to follow her out, I see a look fading from her eyes, gone too fast for me to see what it is. Odds are this whole situation has set her back emotionally again. That's not good.

"This isn't going to end well, is it?" Tali sighs as she walks out with me.

I watch Shepard moving some distance ahead of us, a deep part of my mind remembering that day on Omega when we almost lost each other because of the Shadows. As we leave the skycar lot, I cast one last glance back at the Shadow Irana took out. With a sigh, I give Tali as brief an answer as I can: "No. It won't."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 – Shepard

 _"Coming away from the Citadel, Commander," Joker says over the COMM, "Say the word and we'll engage the relay within five minutes."_

"Good," I respond, "Standby and I'll set the destination."

 _"Got it. Until then, we'll just…you know…wait here."_

I shake my head at him as the COMM clicks off, unable to hold back a small smirk at the very Joker-like dialogue, before turning to the others. All 14 of us have gathered in what was once the war room and are looking over the central console. Irana was introduced to everyone and given the general situation on the way off the Citadel, so all that's left is the reason we brought her in. "Alright, let's see that signal."

Irana calls up the signal she caught and sends it through the console, letting EDI connect to it and add in the encryption key. "It's auto-executing, but it looks like it runs on a network. It actively seeks matching signals and locks onto them. EDI and I can pinpoint a location once the connection itself has been established."

"Then I guess we're waiting for a while. EDI, make sure you're watching this thing. The last thing we need is one of the Shadows' surprises breaking through our systems."

"Understood, Shepard," EDI nods as she turns part of her attention to the signal.

"…so…" Jack steps up to Irana, "…what exactly did Shepard tell you when she explained all this?"

"The Black Shadows are an order of assassins," Irana recaps what I said to her before, "essentially founded by a human biotic named Killian Orion, who wanted to take over the Citadel. They brought Commander Shepard back from the dead to head the assault and tried to kill you all so you wouldn't get in the way. You took out Orion and now they're trying to kill you. Why? Is there more I should know?"

Jack only looks at me for half a second. "No. Of course not."

She understands as well as any of them. Naturally, I didn't tell her that only my body was dead and my mind was inhabiting the Reapers. Obviously, I didn't tell her how close the Shadows got to killing my closest friends. And most definitely, I didn't tell her what the Shadows put me through and how I was affected until Garrus woke me up. No one is close enough to hear that except the only people I would trust with my life—for that matter, no one but Garrus knows just how much I endured in those days. I let Irana in just enough that she can actually help us. But, on the grand scale, I barely let her in at all. Clearly, though, none of the others can blame me for it. Even if they could, they can understand why I did what I did. They trust my judgment enough to know why I would hold back. My gut tells me anyone with half a brain would do the same.

My heart says I just can't take talking about it and she doesn't need to know.

"EDI," I say the second I shake myself out of it, "how long do you think that's gonna take?"

"I have no way of knowing for sure," she answers, "I can expand the signal's strength so that it reaches more clusters, giving a greater chance of finding the nearest connection. But enhancing the signal too far will put considerable strain on our systems—we will have to move to another cluster to continue the search. The least amount of time it could take is about 20 minutes. At worst, it may take us the rest of the day."

I sigh. _Figures._ "OK. Everyone to your stations, be ready to move when we catch the signal. Irana, stay here and help EDI monitor it." After giving the order, I head out through the area that used to be the tech lab and toward the CIC.

Garrus catches me halfway there. "Are you alright?" Of course, he knows I'd be upset. He knows I have trouble talking about what's happened since my return—not with him, though, just…well, with anyone else.

I still shake it off. I've been through far worse than just revisiting old memories. "Yeah. I'm fine." Before he can take this any farther, I walk away, secretly thankful he doesn't try to follow me. In ten seconds, I'm at the elevator. I instantly step into it and hit the button for deck 1 before any of the others can get to it. As the doors close and it starts moving, I lean back against the wall and breathe deep, desperate to let my mind wander from the Shadows entirely.

…anything else…anything else…

 _I hesitated as long as I could. I sat there at the edge of my bed, wondering what I could even say. I still don't know if I had so much trouble because I had no idea what to tell him or because there was too much to put into a video message. Then I looked at the clock. We'd be approaching the Sol relay in about 20 minutes and I still hadn't gotten ready for the actual battle. So I took a deep breath, braced myself, and hit record. "Hi, Garrus." I then forced myself to come out with the rest: "If you're watching this, then we won the war and I didn't make it back."_

 _It took all the strength I had to say what I had to say. The first part of the message, where I poured my heart out about how much I loved him and how much it meant to me that he stuck by me for so long—that I had been dying to say for months and was more than happy to put into words. But the second part destroyed me: "…don't be afraid to go on without me." I don't know how I brought myself to say it, to tell him to move on without me and find some happiness for himself even if it couldn't come from me, from my love and what we had. By the time I got through it, the tears had already started beyond my control and I had to look away and force them back. I didn't want him to see this. I never did._

 _I finally let loose everything else I had to say, openly confessing how much our time together had meant to me and begging him not just to hold on but to come find me when we were both gone. I ended the message the only way I knew how: "I love you, Garrus. Goodbye." As soon as I'd said it, I shut off the recorder and stored the message with the others. Then the emotions I'd held back for the past minute broke free again before I could stop them and the last five minutes allotted to me before I had to go get ready for the mission…I spent those five minutes crying._

 _For the first time in months, I wasn't feeling all this for the loss of my planet or even the friends the war had taken from me. And for the first time in my life, I let myself get broken down. Not just because the most selfish part of my mind was screaming at me for exposing myself to thoughts of Garrus with someone else but because the thought of him living without me made me wonder_ What if it's the other way around? _I wouldn't have made it this far without him. How could I spend the rest of my life without hearing his voice, seeing those starry blue eyes, feeling him kiss me, knowing he was right beside me, or regaining my hope every time I lost it solely because he loved and believed in me?_

…Garrus… _my mind begged to the depths of my soul, my voice unreachable through my tears,_ …don't leave me…

I force the memory back, feeling those same tears at the edges of my eyes. _Anything else, yeah…anything but that._

The elevator door opens. I force myself to get out, all but collapsing against the wall by my cabin door. As I pull it together, I try again, hoping the memory that reaches me won't break me down again.

 _I looked out as I reached the next floor of the FOB. For all my wandering in my early days, I'd never been to London before this year. Seeing it like this was a nightmare. Husks and other Reaper monsters tearing it to pieces, devouring everyone in sight…even the batarians didn't deserve what the Reapers had done. This madness had to stop._

 _And, if I had anything to say about it, it_ would _stop. Today._

 _I finally brought myself to step through the door into the next outpost. The turians' outpost. I instantly heard the voice I'd fallen in love with at the back of the room, coordinating with the troops. I smiled just at the sound of it. After talking with the Primarch, the first place I went was right to it._

 _Garrus turned to face me before I'd even come up to him. He always knew when I was there. "Shepard," he nodded to me as we drew closer, "So I guess this is…"_

 _I smirked. "Just like old times?"_

 _He smiled back, laughing for a few seconds. That was enough to make me actually_ happy _for a moment, enough to make me forget what was happening just outside. Then he started to think about it. "Hmm. Might be the last chance we get to say that."_

 _I looked at him in shock, not believing how he could ever… "You think we're gonna lose?"_

 _"No," he answered, "I think we're about to kick the Reapers back into whatever black hole they crawled out of. Then we're going to retire someplace warm and tropical and live off the royalties from the vids. Maybe even find out what a turian-human baby looks like."_

 _That last statement sent me reeling, thinking about it… I could just see us holed up in a house on a garden world with a family. At the thought of it, I felt my heart leaping. I could have everything I never knew I wanted—I could have an actual future. And I could spend it with the one person I loved most in the entire galaxy. I didn't even know I was smiling until I found myself laughing at the prospect. "I'm game. Though I think adoption's a better idea. Biology may not cooperate."_

 _He shrugged. "I suppose there will be a lot of little krogan around soon."_

 _I kept up that smile for a few seconds. Until I was reminded of one of the reasons why I saved the krogan to begin with: "We just have to beat the Reapers first."_

 _Garrus looked at me for a few seconds, clearly thinking over something a bit grimmer. "James told me there's an old saying here on Earth: 'May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.' Not sure if turian heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there…meet me at the bar. I'm buying."_

 _For a split second, I thought back to my farewell message, to how the thought of either of us dying—or even both of us—broke me down. No. I wouldn't let it happen. "We're a team, Garrus. There's no Shepard without Vakarian, so you'd better remember to duck."_

 _"Sorry," he bantered back, "turians don't know how. But I'll improvise."_

 _Even under these circumstances, I couldn't stop myself from giving off a small smile in response to his attempts at humor. One of many reasons I was totally in love with him._

 _"And Shepard…" He moved closer to me, taking my hands in his. "…forgive the insubordination, but your boyfriend has an order for you: come back alive. It'd be an awfully empty galaxy without you."_

 _Thinking was no longer possible. So I acted instead. I pulled him in._

 _And gave him the last kiss we'd ever have before the final run._

 _"Goodbye, Garrus," I whispered as we pulled away, "And if I'm up there in that bar and you're not…" I saw the look in his eyes. Anyone else would see a simple, steady, distinctly turian gaze. I saw the gaze of a man in love, begging me never to let go. It almost broke me, but I kept going, no longer even caring if he heard my voice break from the thought of it: "…I'll be looking down. You'll never be alone." Only after I'd said so did I pull away and start towards the next section of the base._

 _Before I left the outpost, I heard him whisper back: "Never."_

I find myself smiling at the memory, the tears that were threatening me no longer a risk. I take this chance to open the door and step into the captain's cabin. As the door closes behind me, I make my way to the desk, leaning against it. For a moment, I lose myself in the same thoughts his offer presented, to the possibility of us starting a family together. It's only when the sudden consideration of _Why didn't we do it_? strikes me that the string of dreams breaks.

And gives way to the memory of the answer.

 _I ran as fast as my feet allowed to cross the field to the conduit, only stopping for a few brief seconds when the force of Harbinger's beam going off around me threw me forward or back. When I started getting closer, I started to believe I might actually make it._

 _I was wrong._

 _Suddenly, one of the blasts hit one of the trucks moving in front of me, sending it flying back towards me. I moved on instinct, diving down out of the way. When I looked back as I got up, I found myself regretting it. The tank was still moving. Right into my squad-mates. They ducked out of the way of the actual crash, but the resulting explosion had immobilized both of them, too injured to make it to the beam. Ignoring the carnage around me entirely, not even caring if Harbinger's next attack went my way while I wasn't looking, I ran as fast I was able back to them, helping them behind the nearest cover._

 _"_ Normandy _, do you copy?" I called into my COMM as soon as we were out of the way, "I need an evac! Right now!"_

"Taking heavy casualties—" Joker's response came, cut through by static. _Nevertheless, it was only a few seconds before the ship I called home came onto the battlegrounds and landed nearby._

 _I quickly supported Garrus, too injured to walk on his own, and helped him to the ship as the soldiers around us gave us covering fire. Once we were close enough, I did the one thing I swore I'd never do: I let go of him. "Here. Take him."_

 _"Shepard!" he called back the second we were no longer in contact._

 _"You've gotta get out of here," I insisted._

 _"And you've gotta be kidding me!"_

 _"Don't argue, Garrus."_

 _"We're in this to the end!" His voice was just slightly shaking from the pain, no longer able to hide it. But he still wasn't willing to leave my side, even with all the chaos around us._

 _There was no talking him out of this. So I did the only thing I could and told him the truth: "No matter what happens here…" As I said it, I stepped closer to him, never once taking my eyes off his even as my hand pressed against his scars. "…you know I love you. And I always will."_

 _He looked back at me, something inside him breaking. "Shepard…" he pleaded, "…I…" He gazed into my eyes for a moment, wondering how to respond. Finally, he said what I always dreamed he would though I never needed to hear it to know it was true: "I love you, too."_

 _I wished I could stay here with him or at least spend a few precious seconds more with him. But, my whole body shaken with the sadness the realization incurred, I knew I had to keep moving. And I pulled away._

 _He still reached for me, silently begging me not to go._

 _I couldn't. So I made him. "GO!" I couldn't watch him leave, so I turned back to the run before they took off, seeing my own emotions reflected in his eyes. The last I ever saw of him before…_

… _before Harbinger's beam hit me, left me struggling to even stay alive._

… _before Anderson and the Illusive Man both died and I enabled the Crucible to dock on the Citadel._

… _before the Catalyst presented its choices and I elected to give my life to save all life in the galaxy—synthetic and organic alike._

 _It's funny. When Harbinger's beam hit me, I thought that was it. But I guess some part of me knew I was going to keep going if only for another hour, because my life didn't flash before my eyes. Instead, I was met with visions of the future Garrus had me dreaming of. Thoughts of waking up beside him every morning, of feeling a life we made growing inside me, of what that turian-human baby might look like. I didn't care if it wasn't possible. I just let myself believe in my pain-ridden delirium that someday it might be._

 _When I activated the Crucible, then my life really did flash before my eyes. I thought of Joker, always there to deliver some snappy one-liner or sarcastic comment, his unflinching penchant for comedy ironically keeping me sane and giving me faith that I still had some light to fight for. I thought of Anderson, always watching over me and guiding me—my mentor in every way, it seemed. I thought of Tali, arguably my closest friend in the entire galaxy, always standing by me and reminding me there was someone I could always talk to. I thought of EDI, who claimed me as the reason she found herself, let herself find something with Joker, truly felt alive. But, most of all, I thought of Garrus, my Archangel, my love. He was the last thing on my mind before it was sent to the Reapers._

 _I've all but suppressed the days my consciousness was inside them, but I know for a fact that not a day went by I didn't think of him. Of watching eternity unfold around me without ever being with him again. I never got a chance for my organic emotions to take over all over again before the Shadows restored my body and reclaimed me through that Husk. The transition was a nightmare in and of itself. What I went through in the months that followed just made it worse. Until one day, on the Citadel, in a hunt for 12 prime targets, a name broke through my thoughts and returned the memories I couldn't reach for so long._

 _Garrus Vakarian._

I should find some hope in the memories, in the fact that I came back to him. But all I can think of is how different this could all be if there had been some other way, if I could've somehow avoided what happened with the Crucible and survived the Battle of Earth, if we both might be off on some solitary garden world right now looking to start a family together. To think we'd lose our chance to have that…

The Shadows have made sure I'll never be free to really live the life I dreamed of with Garrus. Any chance I could've had at a real future has been taken away by what they've done. Even after they gave me back my body, a "silent resurrection" that would've enabled me to truly be free to find a future with him, they persistently attacked my family, proving I'll never be free of them. Just thinking about it makes my insides clench up and my vision cloud. What was once sorrow and pleading is now rage and desperation. For the first time in a long time, I find myself crying in absolute _anger_.

I storm over to the couch, grabbing one of the pillows, burying my face as deep in as I can, screaming at the top of my lungs, and then throwing it to the floor as hard as my modified strength allows. It barely helps. Nothing ever does. "EDI," I finally find myself saying, "keep the others out for a while, would you?" Before she can respond, I go into the bathroom, force the door to seal, turn the shower on high, and collapse on the floor beside the faucet, letting the water fall over me and drown out my tears.

I just sit there and let the tears fall. I'm sick with the fury, incapable of thinking straight, unable and unwilling to just let it go. After a while, I curl up here, hugging my knees to my chest and burying my face between them. Time no longer has an effect on me; I barely notice as the water falling down on me gradually fades from bearably hot to shivering cold. When I do realize this, any reason still inside my mind dictates that I turn the shower off and force myself to move on—the last thing I need is to get hypothermia and spend the rest of the mission stuck in the med bay. But my emotions have blocked it out. I don't care anymore.

I just want this all to be over.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 – Garrus

I did try to work in the battery. That didn't work out for long. It wasn't that I had already calibrated the gun—it's not like it ever gets fully optimized anyway. It was that I couldn't think long enough to pay any attention to the algorithms. I never can if I think something's wrong with my Shepard. She did seem fine when I saw her, but the way she just brushed me off when I asked about it…that's not like her. Not unless she's too upset to talk about it. Of course, if she is, I really should be keeping my distance, but that just makes it even harder to think and all but impossible to focus.

I'm not sure how I ended up pulling myself away from the console and changing out of my armor. I just know I'm now sitting in the battery dressed in civvies and looking it over. Apparently, it's been through more than I thought because I notice a considerable amount of scratches, mostly the remains of bullet holes that got mended.

Including one in the left side.

… _I remember taking that shot…I remember the moment I drove one of Shepard's arrows into Orion's chest, forcing him to pull the trigger and send the bullet through me…_

I find my hand pressing against my side. As if I was shot there only two hours ago instead of over two months. But I don't bother pushing the memory back. I'd like to think I've learned a few things about letting memories take over and I know how to counter it. My hand finally pulls away from my side and lifts the edge of my shirt to expose it. Within three days of taking that shot, it'd turned into another scar.

 _So I remember the night the bandages came off. I remember coming into Shepard's cabin and the way she pressed her fingers there. I remember the way she knelt down there and looked at the scar, as if committing it to memory the way she has the ones across my face. I remember how I pressed my hand against hers and got down on my knees beside her to gaze into those gleaming emerald eyes. And I remember the way she pressed herself against me and kissed me until we couldn't breathe…then kept going anyway._

I smile at the memory. _Much better._ Then I bring myself to my feet and step out of the battery. I've got the feeling at least some of the others are in the observation deck, so Shepard is probably headed to see them. She always does.

And my intuition is as accurate as ever. Tali, Liara, Ash, and Wrex are in the portside lounge.

"Hey, Garrus," Ashley smirks, "Just watching the view. Always liked it."

"Samara always has, too," I point out, "Surprised she's not in here with you."

"She prefers isolation, it seems," Liara counters, "She went to the starboard deck, where she was stationed before the suicide mission."

"Right. That sounds more like her."

"So!" Wrex says, "Back to the fight together again, eh, Garrus? Guess we really shouldn't be so surprised those assassins are still after a piece of us."

"Or, more accurately, us in pieces," I comment as I take a seat nearby.

Wrex just laughs. "True."

"Right," Tali sighs, "Like I needed to have that image in my head. Let's just hope Irana can—" She then looks over at me. "…wow."

"What?" I instantly ask.

"Nothing, it's just…I don't think I've ever seen you in civvies before."

I look curiously down at myself for a second and think it over. "…huh. Guess you haven't. It was always with Shepard." I shrug. "I'm more comfortable in my armor anyway." Then I think that over and start looking around. "Wait…where _is_ Shepard? I figured she'd be in here before me."

 _"She's still in her cabin," EDI answers, "She asked not to be disturbed."_

That instantly strikes a nerve. Shepard cares too much about us to block us out like that. Anyone who doesn't know her as well as I do would think she's simply at work on a mission report or something and trying to focus. No. Any time in the past, even after some critical mission, she kept her "open door policy" and told us "If you need me, feel free to ask." For her to outright ask to be alone is worse than all the times in the past that she's called me into her cabin because she couldn't face her emotional state by herself.

Something is wrong. Very wrong.

I look over at the observation deck door, thinking this over. I don't think for five seconds before I've determined what I have to do. I don't care if she tries to chase me away. She needs someone there. And the only person she ever lets in is me. "…I'll be back when I can. I'm going to check on her." I head straight for the elevator, not even caring that EDI doesn't bother trying to stop me—she knows as well as I do what's going on and what my response should be.

When I come to deck 1, I head straight through the cabin door like always. I stop after two steps when I look around and don't see her. Then I hear the shower running. For a moment, I'm content to stand here and wait for her like I did the night of Omega-4, almost believing that maybe she just wanted to be alone to recover from that last fight or the rooftop chase coming after it.

Until I hear an all too familiar sound under the rush of the water, small enough to be drowned out to any less heightened senses yet strong enough to make my blood thrust even harder into my heart. …Sara's crying.

I move regrettably fast yet achingly slow when I approach the door and knock on it. "Sara?"

"Go away!" she snaps back all too fast.

I flinch back in shock. Even when she wants to be alone, she doesn't snap at me like that. This isn't something built off of guilt or the aftershock of her nightmares. Whether that's better or worse I can't tell. But either way, she can't convince me she doesn't actually need someone in there with her. So I hack into her door and force it open.

Shepard is curled up on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest and burying her face between them, softly shivering from a combination of the practically freezing water pouring down on her and what is obviously the mild convulsions of breathless tears.

I don't even know if she notices I opened the door before I get down on the floor beside her. "Sara, what's wrong?"

"I said 'go away!'" she snaps back, grabbing the hand reaching out to her and using it to push me back.

I catch myself before I hit the floor, distantly seeing her wince for half a second at her own actions. She doesn't shift her position at all, though, and makes no attempt to force me to leave. So, before she can, I move closer to her and press my hands to either side of her face, forcing her to look at me.

Her skin is moist. That could be blamed on the water coming down over her head, but the way her eyes are reddened betrays the truth. Behind the red tints and remains of tears, her eyes are flooded with emotion—pleading, anger, sadness, much more than I thought a single human could feel at once. When she doesn't fight off my grasp, my hands ease their hold, which somehow causes a small section of her hair, light red turned to bright red by the water running through it, to come loose and fall over my right hand. One of my talons carefully pushes it back behind her ear, noting the way the dampness has made it cold and just slightly heavier.

"Sara, you have to talk to me," I finally bring myself to tell her, "What's bothering you?"

She simply looks at me for a second before turning her gaze down to the bathroom floor. "…you were right, Garrus. It's never going to end. The Shadows will never leave us alone. And even if we do find some way to stop them for good, someone else is going to come along eventually. We'll never get a chance to…" She doesn't let herself finish.

I take a second to look at her, pondering how to address this issue. I wish I could tell her she's wrong, but we have no way of knowing. So instead, I pull one hand away from her face and take hers in it. "We don't know what's going to happen. But whatever it is, we'll face it together."

"I know. But I wish there was some way we could stop fighting, like we…" She just barely stops herself. But I know what the rest is.

Like we planned on Earth.

As the realization strikes me, my other hand falls from her face as well. "…oh."

She sighs and comes out with it: "Yeah. The irony is that I never thought about it until we started talking about it, then it was suddenly the one thing I wanted most, and now I'm having a breakdown because we might never get to—"

" _We will_."

She looks at me in amazement. "What?"

I find myself smiling as I answer her: "I'm fighting for you, remember? And even if I have to take on every living creature on Omega again, we're going to have a future together. I love you too much for anything else."

That last statement makes her smile, barely holding back a laugh. "I should've known that'd be your response—killing a bunch of mercs makes everything better."

I can't stop myself from laughing back before giving her a playful shove, which, in turn, makes her actually laugh. "What can I say? You bring out the best in me, Shepard."

She smiles brightly again. I love that sight more than I ever could've believed I would. "…never let me go?"

I answer by taking hold of her hands even tighter. "Never."

Her smile softens. Then she leans in, pressing her head against mine. After a moment, she turns to nuzzle against me.

I just barely keep myself from laughing again. "You know you're all wet, right?"

"Well, now you are, too."

Then I actually do laugh. "So are we going to remedy that or just sit here in the rain?"

"Right. Sorry." With that, she pulls away. Now that she's not crying, she turns to the shower control as she gets back on her feet. But just before she can turn off the water flow meant to drown out her "breakdown," she stops moving.

I get back on my feet beside her. "Something wrong?"

She slowly turns to look at me…and smiles. "…I want to test a theory first." She then takes hold of me and leads me to draw closer.

No objections to be had, I follow her lead and kiss her, closing my eyes to take it in. We're so close that the water falling down over our heads can't flow between us. Her fingers find their way to my scars, like always, this time cold enough to make me wrap my own fingers around them to warm them. My other hand slides into her hair again, talons grasping tighter the more passion takes over and drawing a small flow of water out of it. I feel her heartbeat shivering as my own pounds harder with every passing second, her free hand held against it. Every sense at my disposal is filled with her—her touch cool and shuddering, her scent laden down by freshwater. Through it all, she holds even tighter to me, not caring how much pressure I respond with in my need to stay in this moment for as long as I possibly can.

She seems as hesitant as I am to pull away, but a small shiver through her bones forces her back to catch her breath. When she does, she reaches over to turn off the cold water falling over us.

"Exactly what theory were you testing?" I ask curiously, keeping my arms around her.

She smirks. "Cliché from a bunch of old romance vids: kissing in the rain. Wanted to see if the hype was accurate."

Intrigued, I smile in anticipation of an answer to what I ask next: "And what did you decide?"

She smiles brightly as her bright green eyes, returning to glistening emerald now that her tears are gone, shine gleefully. "It is…when you're kissing a turian."

I find myself lighting up as her words take hold. There's that mischievous spark I always loved, the one I thought was taken by her death. That's my Sara Shepard. "Well, now I have to test my own theory: are you actually keeping score on your little game of 'Playing with Garrus'?"

The question causes her to laugh, sincere and joyful. "I wish I had so I could tell you what it was!"

"Don't worry," I smirk, "You're winning."

She sighs as she steps out of the bathroom, letting me follow and close the door on the way out. "Great. Now I'm envisioning a whole scoring system and I'll have to tally it up later. Thanks for opening that can of worms, Vakarian."

"You started it. Plus, I had to counter with my own game of 'Playing with Shepard' and just asking in the first place probably got me about 20 points."

She scoffs, grabbing my arm behind her back and bringing me to wrap it around her waist as she holds it in place with her own. "Maybe we should check scores like we always did with our kill counts."

I find myself smirking at the idea as I lean into position to whisper my answer in her ear (which I know drives her wild—that's going to rack up my score): "You know I can't match you."

She smiles, her breathing pattern shaken by my action. "If you keep doing that, you will."

"What? This?" I lean closer, copying what she always does to me and nuzzling against her, just close enough to brush against her ear.

That causes a swift, delighted reaction—she's still ticklish there. "That, too! Stop!"

I comply. But only so I can pull her closer, holding her tighter and burying my face in her neck.

Her breathing doesn't even out. Though the hand not keeping my arms around her waist presses against me as if to push me away, she tilts her head in a gesture to keep going and dig deeper. Slowly, she turns to lean into it, giving her freedom to reach over and kiss my scars without breaking away from me. She then starts to do it continuously in some sort of pattern as if following a path laid out through them, coming away so slightly between the moments that her lips softly caress me that I never once feel her nose leave my plates. When her lips are at my ear, she stops to whisper into it: "I changed my mind. Don't stop."

Stress, fatigue, loyalty, and, most of all, love have worked together over the past few years to break down any will I might have to resist her—she took the last of it on Earth. At times like this, I can deny her nothing short of my life (of course, the hallucinated "siren song" I fell into under the poison's influence makes me believe I'd gladly give her that, too). So I don't stop. And as she turns to offer her full attention to her response, I follow her lead and let my full attention move across her neck and down to her collarbone.

Somehow, two seconds later, we're sprawled out on the bed, her lying there with her head between the pillows and me on top of her, my left hand keeping me upright, my right hand grasping her hair again, and my senses still locked on her collar. It doesn't take long for my motions to stop when I reach the collar of her top, but that's easily rectified. My hands might not work well for undoing buttons, but I know how to work a zipper. Not willing to take my right hand away from its contact with her, I lean on my side for a moment to free my left hand to do it instead. When it returns to its original position, she meets it there and takes hold of it. I return her grasp then return my full attention to her collar and start working my way down.

I linger at her rib cage probably longer than I should. But I'm in the perfect place to feel the steady pound of her heartbeat softly quicken. The musical rhythm reminding me she's alive and with me—or, as she would put it, only alive for me—chases any thought or reason I might have from my mind, mesmerizing and calming and one thing I absolutely adore. If I could reach into her chest just long enough to kiss that beautiful beating heart, I probably would. Then I feel her left hand, her right still tightly interlocked with my left, reach up just enough to bring me the slightest bit closer and I remind myself what I was doing, quickly sending myself back into it. I follow her sternum down to her abdomen, only now allowing my right hand to come free from her hair so the side of it can slowly come down past me without coming an inch away from her skin.

By the time I've buried myself against her waist and my hand has reached her left leg, she moves her left hand away from my back and up to my scars, gently running her fingers over them and then tracing the edges of the plates to my fringe. Feeling her touch against me draws me to look up to her, finding her smiling happily down at me, her breathing slightly sharpened by pleasure. For a few seconds, I simply return her smile, giving my free hand time to pry off her boots and toss them aside. Then I crawl up onto the bed completely and lie down beside her, letting us both move closer together.

I don't know how I end up kissing her again, but I couldn't care less. When my lungs demand I pull back for just a moment, I stay as close to her as I can, taking it in as she nuzzles against me again. My mental alarms are going off, telling me I've reached an opportunity to remind her how much I love her. But we've already passed the point where words become futile, so I simply let my thoughts echo with the message and don't bother stopping myself from audibly reacting to her tender movements.

She's so close that, when the icy water soaked through her clothes causes her to shiver again, I shiver with her. Some part of me worried for her sake, I quickly take hold of the covers and lead her to crawl under them. She follows my lead gladly. But only once I've consented to go in with her and stay close. I wrap my arms around her, one hand moving up and down her back, and hold her here to keep her warm. Smiling at the idea, I start doing what she always does and nuzzle against her. She responds with an actual _giggle_ , adjusting her position enough to tell me to keep it up. Then she wraps her arms around me and brings her leg up to me the same way she did when we danced on the Citadel, wrapping it around mine.

For a moment, nothing exists but this embrace with her. Then, suddenly, a thought strikes me and I stop moving. "…huh."

She pulls back enough to look at me. "What?"

"I just remembered that I was with some of the others in the observation deck before coming up here and I said I'd be back after I checked on you."

She just scoffs. "Please. They know us well enough not to care."

Point taken. "Right. …so what do we do now?"

She smiles back before pulling closer and kissing me again. I respond wholeheartedly, not even noticing or caring when one of her hands softly climbs to the plates below my fringe and starts to dig in. My hands are still against her back, one in place to feel her heart and the other pressed to her lower back tight enough to bring her even closer to me. She brings us deeper and deeper into the embrace until she finally retreats just enough to catch her breath, her lips still brushing against me.

I can't contain my delighted reaction. "I like that plan."

She beams, heightening my delight exponentially. "Good." Then she dives back in, tying us together until we run out of breath.

And then she keeps going anyway.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 – Shepard

I feel it when he wraps his arms around me and starts to bury himself against me. I'm still aware of my movements when I turn just enough in his grasp to respond by kissing his scars and telling him not to stop. My control over my actions starts to blur a little when I turn to devote what focus I have remaining to continuing my current task even as he starts following the trail of my flesh and bones down my neck to…well, that's when things get fuzzy: I'm not sure how we ended up on the bed. But the next thing I know is that I'm lying there as he digs into my collarbone.

I don't bother working up the will to even move as I lay there with my head between the pillows. His right hand is grasping my hair again (which is still damp from sitting under the shower for so long trying to drown out my emotional attack, but he doesn't seem to care). His left hand is at my side and then grasping my right. His full attention is on the stream of kisses he's sending down my collar to my sternum. He stops there for a moment, the way he leans into it and the angle at which he does telling me that he's feeling my heartbeat again. I smile to myself at the thought of it before raising my left hand from my side to his back and gently pressing him closer to me. The gesture seems to be taken as a signal to return to his original plan and continue moving down over the center of my abdomen.

That's when his right hand reluctantly comes free of my hair and starts to move down, brushing against my face so slightly in its descent that I come alive with the ecstasy his touch always induces. His hand keeps moving down, just barely touching me the whole way down so a shiver follows it through each bone in my spinal column. It only stops when it reaches my left leg, softly holding to it. I wind up doing something similar with him, pulling my left hand away from him and then up to his scars, my fingers tracing the edges of the plates and then, of all things, stroking his fringe. He responds to it, though, only then turning from where he's resigned to laying there with his head on my stomach so that he can look up at me. Seeing his eyes alone draws me to smile, only in this brief moment of utter silence noticing how my lungs are answering his actions. Seeing my smile does much the same for him. Then he moves again, pulling his hand from my leg just enough to throw my boots aside and then climbing up onto the bed beside me.

As we pull together, we, seemingly on instinct by now, start to kiss again. Even when he pulls back to breathe, I move even closer, nuzzling against him. _…if you'd told me 15 years ago that I'd be lying here_ nuzzling a turian _…_ The thought, combined with the sound of Garrus' (all too recognizable to me) faint growl of pleasure, draws me to smirk at myself for a moment before a chill strikes my watered-down body and draws me to shiver for real. We're so close together that the shaking reverberates through Garrus' body, setting off his typical "My Shepard needs me" instincts. Whether I'm under fire or just a little cold, he's right there for me in a second. So he, practically instantly, grabs the covers we're lying on top of and draws me to crawl in under them with him. The "with him" part is crucial to my agreement.

So now we're lying here together, as close as we're capable, both of us with our arms wrapped around the other, his hands moving calmingly up and down my back, the heat of our respective bodies blending together and chasing away the cold that struck me. I think I'm as content as I can get until I feel him copying me: he starts to nuzzle me. Before I can stop myself, the whole scene has me actually _giggling_. I never giggle. …well…not for anyone but Garrus, it seems. I shake it off, the part of me that once prevented anything like that silenced by the joy of holding my Garrus here, and move just enough to tell him not to stop. Then I end up moving even more, bringing my leg up against him and wrapping it around his so that we're locked together.

"…so what do we do now?" he ends up asking me.

I answer with a smile and kiss him again. All my senses give in to the passionate embrace, my eyes closed to take it all in. His hands separate, one pressed to my heart as the other presses to my lower back and brings me to the only "closer" still remaining between us. My hand moves, too, right up to the plates under his fringe to dig my fingers in between them. Delighting in his joyous response, I throw all I have into this convergence for as long as I can before my blood demands I pull away and breathe again. Though some part of my mind believes I should only be capable of breathing when I'm holding to him this way.

Every part of him is bright with happiness when my eyes find his again. "I like that plan."

I beam in response, secretly captivated by the way he lights up for me. "Good." Then I send us back into it, this time heeding that hidden piece of my thoughts and no longer caring if breathing becomes a burden. I don't think I have the heart to deny—if only to myself—that this love means more to me than life itself.

Science indicates turians and humans shouldn't be physically compatible in any capacity, but we still fit together seamlessly. We always have. Even the night of Omega-4, some deep, _deep_ intuition took over and I didn't need to open my eyes to know what to do. I got lost in the way our hearts beat together. I got lost in the way we kissed for the first time. …I got lost in him. I'm lost in him now. So lost that I don't even notice how the fire burning between us gradually starts to grow until—

 _"Shepard," EDI suddenly calls, "Officer Zeranos picked up the Shadows' signal on Noveria."_

I sigh as I pull away enough to answer her. "Alright. Send us in."

 _"I will inform Jeff, Commander. We should arrive in about two hours."_

Should've known. Life always happens. Can't stop it.

Garrus seems to be thinking the same thing. Though he doesn't let his hands leave me, he sighs quietly and starts to get up. "Guess we should get ready to move, huh?"

I quickly tighten every hold I have on him, keeping him from moving. "Didn't you hear her? We have two hours." I lean closer to him, nuzzling against him again as I whisper into his ear the way he always does to me: "We need to have as much time together as we possibly can."

I don't need to see him to know he's smiling. I can feel it. I also feel it when one of his talons reaches up to pull my hair away from the back of my neck so that he can kiss me—somewhere, _anywhere_ —without letting me pull away. "…you read my mind."

 _Two hours later…_

The rest of the squad is already there when Garrus and I come out of the elevator together and into the shuttle bay, already prepared for the action that's bound to come the second we leave the ship. _Doesn't it always?_

"Alright, what do we got?" I ask as I open my locker in the armory and start to pull out my guns, Garrus doing the same next to me.

"The signal connected to the Shadows' sequence we intercepted," Irana explains, "is coming from a base on Noveria, likely one of the science facilities the corporations abandoned after the 'rachni' incident." I suppress the urge to correct her use of air quotes. I doubt she'd take it well if I told her that corporation had found the last living rachni queen and I set her free. "Some of the Shadows are probably holed up there. Since the signal seems to be automatically connecting all Shadow sequences in close enough range, I'd say it's one of the command bases. Maybe not high enough up the chain for the assassin in charge to be there, but probably high enough that we can track the codes that reactivated the base and figure out which Shadow they belong to."

"Good," Ashley says as she readies her rifle, "The sooner we find out who's behind all this and what they want with us, the sooner we can flush them out and take them down."

"Fair enough plan," I agree as I come away from my locker, checking the thermal clip in my pistol before placing it in my holster, "We'll get in close and infiltrate, try to get to the main console and hack their systems. Even if we don't get in, we'll be on the right trail." The second I stop talking is the same second I actually holster my gun. As my hand slowly pulls back from it, I look over my gloves. Then my eyes start glancing over my whole body and something occurs to me. "…wow. I guess this is the first time I've gotten back in my old armor since I came back."

Garrus turns from checking his favored sniper rifle to look at me. He ends up giving me a very brief, very small smile before telling me "It still fits as well as ever."

"Well, I guess you'd know better than I would," Irana comments, "seeing as you're more… _familiar_ with it."

I freeze, looking at her in shock. "Did you walk in on us?!"

"I didn't have to. I came out of the elevator on deck 1 and I could hear you through the door."

Garrus almost drops his rifle in the awkward shuffle following. "…uh…well…what were you doing on our— _her_ deck in the first place?"

"I figured I should inform you in person about Noveria so we could immediately prepare. I didn't think you would be…" She shifts her eyes between the two of us for a few seconds. "… _occupied_."

Deep down, I'm somewhat giddy at the way Garrus almost claimed the cabin as "our deck," but, for the most part, I'm just not sure how to respond to this situation.

"We're approaching our destination," EDI reports before anyone else can say anything, "We should prepare to engage."

Finally, the universe smiles upon me. "Right. Let's move out." I take the front, purposely not looking at Irana or Garrus as I do.

The _Normandy_ can get us close enough to the surface to deploy. Noveria is still a cold hazard in the mountains, so we have to go in as if hitting a zero-oxygen environment. Unfortunately, the _Normandy_ can only get us so close to the actual base, so we're going to have to hike about two or three miles from the drop zone to the Shadows. Thankfully, there's no blizzard as bad as the one that hit us the day of the "rachni incident," but, apparently, it's no more comfortable.

Because it's not five seconds before Garrus draws his arms against his chest. "Spirits, it's freezing out here!"

"I thought you said your armor had thermal vents, too," I comment.

"Well, yeah, but, in case you haven't noticed, turians are adapted to _higher_ temperatures. Cold is a bit of a dilemma under any circumstances."

" _We're_ freezing out here!" Jack snaps as she comes up to me, "How are _you not_ bothered by this?"

I shrug. "I'm adapted to stronger temperature extremes."

"Something the Shadows did?"

"That and my so-called 'childhood.' You spend 15 winters with no heating system, you build up a tolerance." Before any of the others can respond, I call up my omni-tool and get my bearings. "Alright, the signal is coming from _that_ direction. Looks like about half of that is downhill, so it shouldn't be too long." I then step over to the nearby drop and take the two-meter fall, landing sharply on my feet and setting out with the others right behind me.

After about 20 meters, I glance back and notice the way Liara is looking around, only passively watching where we're going. "Something wrong, Liara?"

Liara practically jumps. "What?"

Then I realize what the problem is. "Bad memories?"

Liara simply looks down as she follows. "…yes."

"Been here before?" Irana asks.

"And it wasn't exactly pleasant."

"We could always toss a few snowballs back and forth before we get there," I smirk, "take your mind off it."

"Please, no."

"One of the unpleasant things?" Irana questions.

"Quite the opposite. Shepard has more experience on the subject and I know I would lose."

I just barely suppress the urge to laugh before turning back to the path. Even as I keep guiding the squad through to the base, I find myself remembering that day.

 _We were on our way out of Peak 15 after taking care of the Rachni. As Garrus and I made our way to the exit, on the other side of which we had left the Mako that would take us back to the_ Normandy _'s dock, I noticed Liara moving slowly and sadly._

 _I finally stopped Garrus before we reached the actual exit and turned back to her. "Are you alright, Liara?"_

 _Liara just looked at me. "Yes, I…I'm fine."_

 _I sighed and stepped over to her. "Liara…you were just forced to kill your mother. I know I wouldn't be 'fine.'"_

 _"But I am!" she snapped all too readily._

 _I just looked at her, taking her response as confirmation._

 _After a second, she realized it was true. "…I'm sorry, Commander, I just…I need to handle this alone."_

 _That much I could understand. I nodded. "OK. But you know you can always talk to me if you need to, right?"_

 _She nodded back. "I do. Thank you, Shepard."_

 _"Right then," Garrus sighed, "Let's get going?"_

 _"Yeah, let's do that," I answered, pulling out my helmet. But even as Garrus and Liara put theirs on, I glanced out at what was on the other side of the door first. "Shame we couldn't stay, actually. I always liked the snow." I found myself remembering the winters on Earth. All the times I would find a few hours to myself to enjoy the weather, frozen as it was. The few years I actually had worthy opponents in a snowball fight. Every "Christmas" that led winter to become my favorite season._

 _"Well, I wouldn't know," Garrus commented as he got ready to head out into it, "It doesn't exactly snow on Palaven."_

 _"It does on Thessia," Liara remarked in reply, "Though not as often as Earth, I believe."_

 _By the time I hit the button to open the door, I had a plan forming. It was pretty obvious to me that neither of my friends had any positive connection with the wintery weather like I did and could use some sort of release. So, once they headed out ahead of me, I acted on it._

 _Two seconds later, they were both pelted with snow._

 _Garrus, naturally, whirled around first, practically reaching for his gun. When all he saw was me standing there, half-doubled over in laughter, he essentially started glaring at me. "What was that?!"_

 _"Something the people on Earth call a 'snowball fight.'" I then ducked down to grab another handful of snow and toss it at him._

 _Of course, now that he had the general idea, he gave the natural turian reaction: retaliation. Five seconds later, all three of us were throwing frozen projectiles at the other two. We were finally having some fun together. Liara even got so into it that she outright formed a biotic field around a nearby pile of snow and threw the whole thing at me and Garrus._

 _"Hey!" I snapped as I regained my footing, "That's cheating!"_

 _"If there were rules," she countered snidely, "you should've explained them before we started!"_

 _Unfortunately, the exchange had the two of us laughing so hard that Garrus sneak-attacked us both at once. We'd pretty much forgotten we were even on duty until the alarms in our suits started going off, saying the thermal vents couldn't last much longer in this blizzard and forcing us back into the Mako. But, once we were back in and I was calling the_ Normandy _to prep for takeoff, I was still laughing and Joker ended up asking me "Uh, Commander? What's so funny?" Which, much to Liara and Garrus' amusement, just made me laugh harder._

I take a moment to smile at the memory before checking my omni-tool. Apparently, I was reminiscing longer than I thought, because we're almost there. Then I look up…and stop walking. "…I'm guessing that's it." Just ahead of us is a large building, definitely a defunct science facility like Irana suggested. From the looks of it, it's the perfect place for the Shadows to set up camp. "Definitely not the main base, but certainly on the right track. EDI?"

EDI steps up and checks the area. "Thermal scans show no life forms on the exterior of the facility, except in those watchtowers."

I look over. There are four watchtowers, one to the south, one to the north, etc. Looks like each one is carrying a sniper. "We can't get in close until those guys are down. Garrus, Ash, Irana, and I can take them down before they see us." _I hope._ Getting to the nearest cover, I pull out my sniper rifle as my other appointed squad-mates draw theirs and the rest find cover nearby. I line up a shot at the west sniper, tagging the others to assign each of us their target—Irana to the east, Ash to the south, and Garrus to the north. I then have to pretend to ignore the way Garrus is responding smugly (the north sniper is farthest from us, so giving it to Garrus says I trust his aim most out of all of us—which I do, but now's not the time for a conversation about it or anything) and wait for a chance. Wait… _wait_ …

Now.

Four shots later, all of the snipers standing guard drop dead.

"That went well," James remarks, "…there's gotta be a catch."

"For once, Vega, we're thinking the same thing," Garrus comments even as he holsters his rifle.

"Agreed," I sigh, knowing full well the Shadows would rarely leave their base so lightly guarded, "Be ready. We're moving in." We do move in, but we keep to cover as much as possible the whole way there.

Once we're as close as we can get without outright rushing in, EDI takes a moment to search the area again. "Still no sign of other guards. There are security cameras, but Liara and I can easily bypass them long enough to get in."

"Do it."

Five seconds later, Liara and EDI's signals go through and the cameras temporarily lose functionality, giving us the window we need to get to the main entrance and let EDI hack her way in.

Once we're inside and still no alarms go off, I take my helmet off and pull out my assault rifle ( _Good to have this one back_ ). "Alright. Let's get moving and we should be able to—"

Suddenly, gunshots start going off. Out of instinct, I duck to the side, luckily springing behind a pillar when my shields go down as the others take similar cover nearby. After my shields come back up, I take the risk of peeking out at our opposition. _Fifteen_ Shadows—too many for a guard detail. Something's not right. Still, I ready my assault rifle and start firing, the others following suit nearby. Ten seconds later, all the Shadows are down.

"That was too coincidental," Miranda remarks.

"And too easy," Wrex adds.

"That wasn't a coincidence," I point out, stepping over to inspect the bodies, "They knew we were here. How?" Then I hear something. A small yet piercing sound, almost shrill though still barely audible, similar to a…flat-line. I quickly grab one of the fallen assassins' arms and turn on their omni-tool. "You've gotta be kidding me!"

"What now?!" Tali growls.

"Guess they remembered you guys are infamous for outwitting their security and sneaking through their bases. They rigged all their omni-tools with heartbeat monitors! They're tracking our movements every time we take one of them out!"

No sooner have I said it than the next contingent of Shadows shows up and starts shooting. Thankfully, with all of us firing together, they still don't take too long to go down, but that just means more are coming. I quickly signal to the others that we have to get moving _fast_.

This is _not_ going to be easy.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 – Garrus

We've been inside the base for ten minutes and we've already fought off at least three dozen of the Shadows. And they won't stop coming. Something tells me they replenished their numbers _a lot_ more than we thought they had.

Shepard starts down the next turn and instantly jumps back when a grenade comes flying at her. She responds in kind and starts firing back. Seeing her like this—guarded by her personalized N7 armor, using an assault rifle modded with her favored incendiary ammo—it's just like a year and a half ago, when we were fighting Cerberus and the Reapers. If we weren't getting shot at by an army of assassins, I'd almost be nostalgic. "Start looking for a control room once we come down this hall!" she calls back to us as she switches thermal clips and lets us handle the shooting for a few seconds, "Maybe we can disable the heartbeat monitors remotely!"

Samara then gives off a biotic attack that throws back the last Shadow standing with enough force to break their neck. Once the hall is clear, she holsters her gun and steps out. "Understood, Commander."

As the others start checking doors, I take Shepard's side and head to the first one. "Why weren't we looking until we came to this hall?"

"It's how the science facilities on Noveria are usually designed," Shepard explains, "I overhead Orion talking about this one once, but he said they had no use for it anymore after what Cerberus did just down the road." She then opens the door and looks through. "…should be here somewhere…" After a moment of looking, she comes up dry and pulls back, letting the door close before moving to the next one.

Before she can, I stop her (the others have it pretty much covered, anyway, and they're out of range of the actual conversation). "You're going to tell me if there's something we need to talk about, right?"

She looks at me for a second before giving me a soft smile. "Absolutely. I'm not letting any of that happen again." She reaches over to take my hand. "You said it and you were right: no matter how much we have to fight to get there, we're going to end this." She then moves in closer, her smile brightening. "Besides, I'm really looking forward to seeing what that turian-human baby will look like and I'm not letting some half-witted assassin get in the way of that."

I have to smirk at that one. That smirk slowly turns to a smile to match hers the more I look into her eyes. Without even knowing it, I let my hand reach up to gently push her hair back from them so I can better see the glistening emerald light up—

"Alright!" Ashley groans as she steps over, startling me enough that I jump back a step, "If you two are gonna kiss or something, just get it over with!"

"Yeah," Jack growls, "and do me a favor and warn me first so I can look away this time."

Shepard just gives her a look. "I'll remember that. Did you find it or not?"

She nods, gesturing over her shoulder to the back of the hall. "Out here." She then leads us over to it as the others come to it.

Shepard steps through the door first and looks around. "Yup, this is it. EDI, see if you can hack into their short-range communications through that terminal."

EDI nods and steps over to it, hacking in.

As she works away, I start looking around. It doesn't take long to locate a small weapons locker, clearly meant for the techs and guards that usually occupy this room. I take a moment to check over the guns and bows set up there, even picking up a sword so I can really inspect it. "These look more advanced than the ones they hit us with before. …though, thankfully, not rigged with poison…"

"Just like you, Vakarian," Jacob smirks, "There's an upside to every problem."

"Guess you don't know my Garrus, Jacob," Shepard quips, "He always expects the worst. There's a small chance he'll be pleasantly surprised."

I just smirk back at her as I snap the sword in half and drop it (we can't use it, no point in leaving it for the Shadows). "So far, it's worked out well."

Shepard just gives me one last smile before turning back to the terminal. "EDI?"

EDI steps back for a second. "I can't break through. The encryption key doesn't apply to their short-range or omni-tool communications. We have no way to keep them from linking their heartbeat monitors."

Shepard sighs in clear aggravation. "Great." She takes a second to think this over…then I see the familiar thoughtful gleam in her eye indicating she has a new plan. "…can you access the building schematics?"

"Yes."

"Perfect! Send it to all of us and link our transponders. We'll split up to throw them off-balance like we did the Collectors and meet up at the operations center."

EDI quickly follows through. Two seconds later, all of our omni-tools signal the newly-formed connection. I turn mine on and check it, finding that I can see the location of all 13 of my squad-mates at a specific point on a map. Shepard was right: this really is perfect.

"Everyone got it?" Shepard asks. Once we've all confirmed, she turns hers off. "Alright. From what I can see, we have four clear paths. Irana, Grunt, and I can take one; Jack, Samara, Ash, and EDI take another; Miranda, Jacob, Wrex, and James take the next one; Garrus, Tali, and Liara can take the last."

The others can safely say that's a fair plan. I can't. It was hard enough heading through the Collector base without Shepard right there with me. Now I'm supposed to do it again?

Lucky for me, Shepard notices. "EDI, check the terminal one last time. We need to make sure there's nothing else we can do here before we head out." That's a decent call, too. But it seems obvious to some of the others (Liara, Samara, Tali, and Miranda especially) why she's really doing it. I don't even care that I'm confirming those suspicions when I step over to a corner with Shepard while the others do the search. "You and I are going to be marked evenly—putting us in the same team will call all the Shadows right to us and defeat the purpose of splitting up."

I can't deny that much is true. But my own argument is just as valid: "It's also going to make it harder for me to focus when they start coming at us. Half my mind is going to be wondering what's going on with you."

Shepard looks over at the others for a second, considering how to handle this. After a few seconds, she thinks of something. "You said you made a private COMM channel on Omega, piggybacked it to the link with Tali."

As hard as I've tried to forget that day, I remember that. I also know what she's thinking. Once I know the others aren't looking, I call my omni-tool back up and do the same again. This time, though, I don't hook up the private channel to the messages Shepard sent me before Earth was attacked. This time, I hook it to her COMM and repeat it with hers. Unlike my normal COMM, I'm not turning it off until we're through this and at the operations center. This way, I can still talk to her even from the other side of the base.

Once it's set up, Shepard gives me a brief smile and heads over to the others. It takes all I have not to grab her, pull her back, and kiss her right now. "Anything?" her voice snaps me out of it.

"There is no sign of the altered encryption key or any way of determining it," EDI answers, "Nor is there any sign of any useful, unencrypted, relevant data."

"Doesn't look like there's anything else here we can use either," Irana adds.

Shepard sighs. "Alright. Let's head out." She then opens the door again and moves out, the rest of us following and then splitting up into our appointed teams.

I ready my rifle as Tali, Liara, and I head down one of the halls. Once we're at the first intersection with no sign of Shadows, I take cover long enough to check my omni-tool again. The map is still present and I can see the rest of the squad moving and our needed path laid out. Looks like this is going to work.

 _"Everyone in position?" Shepard's voice comes over my COMM._

"In position and ready to move out," I report back.

 _"Ready here, too, Shepard," Miranda adds._

 _"As are we," EDI confirms._

 _"Alright," Shepard gives the order, "First team to the operations center, secure the area until the rest of us can get there. Once it's clear, EDI and Liara can do one last data-mine and we'll clear out. Let's get moving."_

Once those last three words come through, I turn off the main channel on my COMM as Tali and Liara turn off their COMMs entirely. Signaling them to take point, I check the path for any sign of trouble. None yet, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way for long.

 _"You still reading me, Garrus?" Shepard comes back over my COMM, through the private channel this time, her tone indicating Irana and Grunt can't hear her._

"Loud and clear," I smirk back, knowing Tali and Liara can't hear me, "Keep this channel open, would you?"

 _"Won't be too distracting?"_

"Not as distracting as turning it off. Besides…I thought _I_ was distracting to _you_."

 _"At any other time, I'd tell you to keep talking, but yes. Very."_

It takes a lot of restraint not to at least snicker at her before getting back to the task at hand. I catch up with Tali and Liara, who still haven't come across any hostiles, and take the first turn. We move quick and quiet, like that day on Ilium, and stick to cover as much as possible. Any surveillance systems present don't seem to be active (guess the Shadows are expecting to keep guard solely through the heartbeat monitors, which is probably just as effective), but we still stick to cover before turning down the next hall—

 _Beep!_

I instantly freeze and start looking around for what could've made that noise.

Tali is standing on a pressure plate. "Uh…"

"Don't. Move." I quickly turn my COMM back on. "Shepard, there's a pressure plate here. Tali triggered it. What do we do?"

 _"Uh…" Shepard hesitates, "…I don't know that one. And there's nothing in the schematics about any booby traps or anything."_

I growl to myself. "Liara, scan it and send it to EDI." Liara nods and goes through with it. "EDI, tell me you've got something."

 _"It does not appear to be any sort of lethal trap," EDI answers, "In fact, it appears to be operating on the same frequency as the heartbeat monitors—"_

In the next half a second, my mind makes the connection: this hall isn't weighted down with guards because they're tracking our movements through pressure sensors to conserve their numbers. So my reaction is instant before EDI even finishes talking: "Tali, forget what I said! GET OFF!" I quickly grab hold of her and pull her back, turning off the sensor.

Two seconds later, the Shadows show up.

I duck for cover and prepare to start firing as Liara and Tali do the same. "They found us! We're taking heavy fire!"

 _"Take them out and push forward!" Shepard calls back, "Don't let them—!"_

 _"Uh, problem!" James jumps in, "We caught one, too, and now they're all over_ us _!"_

 _"Since when are you people so—" Jack starts. 3…2…1… "…crap."_

"Shepard," I groan, "please don't tell me Grunt hit one, too."

 _Shepard hesitates. "…no…Irana did." She sighs. "Well, at least we know the plan's gonna work now. Don't let up until we're through!"_

"On it." I then turn off the squad channel on my COMM. "And Shepard? Please be careful out there."

 _"Come on, Garrus, don't you trust me?"_

"Of course, but you know me. Plus, we both have a bad history with these guys. And if something happened to you now—"

 _"Garrus. Honey. I love you._ Be quiet _!"_

"…sorry." Still not turning off the private channel, I focus on the fight at hand, slipping out of cover just long enough to shoot down a few of the oncoming Shadows. There does seem to be a few less than I was expecting, so they probably are off-balance fighting on four different fronts. A few headshots, some coordinated attacks with Tali and Liara, and they're down to five foot soldiers. I lean out to aim my sniper rifle at them—

Suddenly, an achingly familiar sound echoes over the private COMM channel. Shepard's hit.

Just the thought of it throws my aim off, turning my planned headshot into a narrow miss. The armor-piercing round still hits the Shadow, but it just grazes their shoulder, causing no considerable damage. I quickly duck back behind my cover and let Tali call up her drone to take care of the rest. I can't think straight enough to aim right now. Not until I hear Shepard's voice over the COMM again, directing Grunt to their last target. Once I'm convinced she's at least alright, I let off a sigh of relief and jump back into the fight. The last assassin standing is aiming a shot at Liara. I take them out before they can take it.

"That was too close," Tali sighs.

"Just keep moving before more show up," I say, gesturing which way we need to go. But, once again, I keep back and talk to Shepard over the private COMM. "What happened? Are you OK?"

 _"I'm fine," Shepard answers, "I had one of the attacks while I was out of cover and it threw off my aim. My shields went down but Grunt kept me covered. I didn't even take a hit."_

The Reaper signal reached her in the middle of a fight. Spirits, I never even thought of that. The good news is that it won't be happening again anytime in the next 12 hours or so. The bad news is that it could happen again on the next mission and she might not be as lucky. Now me being worried is going to be justified.

"The hall splits and there's no sign of anyone in either direction," Liara's voice suddenly snaps me out of it. I look up and find her and Tali at the end of the hall. Mentally kicking myself for not paying attention, I walk over to catch up with them. "Which way do we go?"

I check the map again as I reach them. "Left." So we head that way. "And, in case it needs to be said, _watch your step_."

"Trust me," Tali groans as she moves up at a steady pace, "I don't make the same mistake twice."

We keep moving slow and steady and, thankfully, silent. It seems to be working well because the Shadows don't catch us for a while. Then, of course, we take a right turn and come directly under fire. All three of us get behind the wall and get ready to fire back. Four seconds after we duck into the hall and rush for cover to really counterattack, one of the Shadows at the back starts firing back with an all-too-recognizable heavy weapon designed by the geth.

"They're really not messing around," I report into the COMM, "They're using heavy weapons this time."

 _"Well, at least they know who they're dealing with," Irana comments._

 _"Not funny," Shepard snaps, "Everyone keep your heads down, try not to get them blown off." She sighs, turning back to the private channel. "I know nothing's ever easy, but why does it always have to get_ harder _?"_

"Tell me about it," I concur under my breath. I then lean out of my cover long enough to snipe down the Shadow carrying the heavy weaponry, allowing us better shots at the rest of the assassins bearing down on us. "How much farther is it anyway?"

 _"This facility isn't as big as Peak 15, if that's what you're asking. Shouldn't be too far."_

"Well, at least your judgment with distances is better than the rest."

 _"Did you really just insult me?"_

"I wasn't trying to, but I am under a lot of stress right now."

 _"You and me both."_

We keep pushing forward, finally taking out the Shadows barring our way. Clearing this hall, we move probably faster than we should, trying to get out of range of the signal from their heartbeat monitors before the next squad can catch up to us. Unfortunately, the _very next hall_ is flooded by assassins at almost the exact same time we enter it, forcing us to search for cover again.

"Something tells me they know what we're up to," I tell the others, "They're following our movements too well."

 _"Stands to reason, I guess," Wrex says, "Not exactly much here to interest us besides the operations center and we are all headed that way."_

 _"That means they'll try to box us in," Shepard strategizes, "keep us from pushing forward if they can't outright stop us. Check your corners and watch your back, don't let them flank you."_

Great. Now we have to keep watch on all sides _and_ avoid getting shot. What next? Another Brute?

Still, I focus on the fight. The Shadows reliably go down after every few shots, and Tali and Liara are more than helpful at keeping them back. Every time I duck back down to let my shields recharge or switch thermal clips, I search the area around us, make sure no more are coming from any other sides. Looks like any that would be meant to cut us off or flank us, though, are being kept busy by the rest of the squad. Perfect.

I finally snipe down the one farthest back and hurry to the next corner, Tali and Liara just behind me. Figures there's another squad waiting there, too. But as I duck for cover, I scope out the area. This squad is smaller. Surely, if there were that few left, they wouldn't have sent so many at us before we got close, right? Any skilled strategist would put the most guards at the actual target location as a failsafe in case we did get past the guards, not send every guard they had at us like cannon fodder. Unless, without Orion around, they really are thinking with their guns instead of their heads, but something tells me that's not it. I mean, even at the base on Omega, they—

I freeze when that thought strikes me. And reminds me about what happened on the first level of that base. _The vents!_ I look up and see a vent shaft over my head. I can definitely see movement inside it. I quickly fire up at it. The shaft opens at about the exact same time I do and the Shadow inside drops to the ground in front of me. Carrying a knife. If they'd gotten the drop on me like they were planning, I would definitely not have made it. That thought draws me to look over at Tali and Liara. They're both still preoccupied with the Shadows ahead of us—neither of them seems to have noticed what just happened.

So I send the warning through the COMMs to make sure everyone hears it: "They're dropping through the vents again. Watch your backs."

Luckily, it's only after I've said so that the next Shadow comes at Liara, so she knows to look out for it and catches them biotically first, throwing them right into the assassins blocking our path forward. The resulting panic gives us clear shots at everyone around them and, finally, a chance to simply clear the area and rush past them.

 _"_ Ay caramba _, that was close," James groans as we head down the hall, "Thanks for the warning, Scars. We had a couple sneaky ones back here. Not so sneaky anymore, though."_

 _"They're not the only ones, Vega," Ash smirks back, "I'm starting to think these guys think too much of themselves. Of course, they won't be doing much thinking anymore either, huh?"_

 _"Do you guys always banter in the middle of a mission?" Irana asks._

Three seconds later, at least half of the rest of us answer back "Yeah."

 _I can practically hear Shepard smirking. "Alright. We're right around the corner from the operations center. The rest of you shouldn't be too far either. But that doesn't mean there aren't still more coming, so be careful out there."_

 _"Yes, Mom," Ashley banters._

 _"Spirits, that's even worse," Irana groans._

 _"Stick with us long enough, you'll get used to it."_

 _"Keep it up that long, I might not make it that far."_

 _"Well, the Shadows have seen you with us now," Grunt points out, "You might be a target, too."_

 _"What have I gotten myself into?"_

"Believe me, Zeranos," I sigh, "I ask myself that question every day."

 _"That dissatisfied, Vakarian?" Shepard smirks._ Whether it's on the private COMM or the team's, she clearly no longer cares.

So I smirk back, not caring either. "Far from it. But you know how I am with humans."

The next one is _most definitely_ over the private channel: _"Yeah, well…you've got reach…and flexibility."_

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking."

 _"Alright. We never did test the claims you made after our 'first date.' Am I gonna have to order you to when we get back on the ship?"_

Before I can respond, Tali and Liara turn the corner ahead of us to the last hall. And are instantly met by a grenade, forcing them to jump back to the wall.

I quickly pull my gun. "Hold that thought." I then step up to the corner and lean around it enough to fire a proximity mine directly at the biggest cluster of assassins I can find. One explosion later, their numbers are taken down enough for all three of us to find cover again and start into the fight. As I switch weapons five seconds later, I check the map one more time. Looks like the others are at about the same distance as we are, except for Shepard's part of the squad, which is waiting at the door to the operations center. We're almost there. Just have to make it through this last hall.

Of course, experience will show that the last part of the mission is typically the hardest.

For the first two minutes or so, we hold here, back from any vents and keeping the Shadows from closing in on us. Once we've worn them down a ways, we start pressing forward, closing in on _them_. There's only ten left by that point, so all we have to do is keep up the pressure. We're too close for me to keep sniping them down, so I stick with my assault rifle. Fortunately, that gives me a high enough rate of fire that I can take out two of them before I have to duck back down behind cover again. Tali and Liara work at similar rate—Tali's shotgun can take them down easily enough and Liara's biotics are doing more than enough damage. So for the last strike on this wave, we pull a maneuver we almost never get to use: Tali sabotages all their weapons, I follow with a specialized overload attack that makes said weapons explode, and Liara closes in with a biotic attack carrying enough force to finish them all off at once.

I take a moment to catch my breath before getting back to my feet. "So…that went well."

"On the one hand, I really hope this gets easier at some point," Tali says, "On the other hand…that was fun."

I smirk at her. "It's always nice getting to kill something." Then I lead her and Liara down the hall to the main corridor. At the center of it is the door leading to the operations center. Shepard and the others are already there, Wrex and Miranda just stepping over as we come through.

"Last again, huh?" Wrex smirks, "Getting slow, Garrus?"

"Sorry, our team didn't have a krogan."

Shepard just shakes her head at us. "I see you two got closer without me around. Care to save it long enough to open the door?"

I respond with a brief look before going to hack through the door. Once it opens, I reach for my gun, ready to fire back if there are any more waiting for us on the other side. Finally some good luck, though, because there aren't any there.

EDI steps over to the console without question as the rest of us step in. "It appears this console was neglected when they upgraded the encryption key. I can gain access to the system momentarily."

"Watch yourself," Shepard instantly commands, "No idiot would upgrade the encryption on a control terminal and not on the main console. Unless they were so overconfident they never thought anyone would ever get here, but I don't think even the Shadows would risk us knowing what we've done."

"Do not worry, Shepard. I can interface with the system directly and keep them from setting off any traps." Ten seconds later, she has access. "We are through. You were right to be cautious, Commander; there were at least four dozen hidden viruses I was forced to disable before we could gain access."

"Have I ever told you how happy I am we've got a friendly AI around?" Shepard smirks.

"No. But thank you."

Liara smiles as she steps over to the console. "Let me see what I can find." She routes the data through her own network, searching through it as only the Shadow Broker can. "Got it. The codes reactivating the bases belong to…" Then she freezes. "…Orion."

But before any of the rest of us can react in our shock, Shepard _drops her gun_. "…check all the data-streams that code has accessed."

Liara looks at her curiously before following the instructions. When the results come in, her panic shifts, not as if we're dealing with a ghost we never wanted to face again but as if we really do have another enemy out for our blood and we're no closer to cracking it. "Yes, it looks like one other person had access to his codes, but the data pertaining to their identity is heavily encrypted."

Shepard seems unnerved. That's never a good sign. Especially not when it comes to the Shadows. But she stays silent for a moment, as if considering whether we should be told what's bothering her or not.

I keep my eyes on her for a moment before looking over at the console. Someone else had access to Orion's codes and has been using them to get to us. Who would—?

"Kendrys Falcon." All of us turn to look at Shepard in confusion.

"Who?" I finally ask.

She sighs and repeats the name: "Kendrys Falcon. She was Orion's right-hand woman in the old days—the only other person he ever trusted with his deepest secrets. Unfortunately, she had a nasty habit of unnecessarily torturing her contracts and even going outside the terms laid out for them upon hire. The Shadows finally excommunicated her, but she must have taken over after Orion died."

"Sounds like we did her a favor," Miranda points out, "Why would she want us killed?"

"And why would she have Orion's access codes if she was kicked out?" Tali questions.

Shepard shifts her feet for a second, her disquiet turning to discomfort. "…I can answer both of those questions with one very simple yet _very_ disturbing answer: Orion…was Kendrys' boyfriend."

We all look at her in shock and amazement, as frozen in silence as the moment we realized she had come back. For almost a whole minute, we stand there wondering how in the galaxy anyone could be in a relationship with that maniac. Of course, that's fairly obvious. What Shepard said about said assassin torturing her victims makes her seem like an ever bigger sadist than Orion ever was. And who dates a sadistic psychopath? A sadistic sociopath.

I finally say what we're all thinking: "Crap."


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11 – Shepard

"Alright, Shepard," Jack is growling as she paces the war room, "given what we've seen, I can understand you not bothering to inform us about the possibility of two of Orion's lieutenants still being at large. But don't you think a little warning might have been in order for his psycho _girlfriend_?!"

"In my defense," I explain, "the last I ever heard of her was two days before Korlus when Orion mentioned she'd picked up a freelance gig trying to take out some turian emissary. When I checked the galactic news three days after coming back to the _Normandy_ and saw that said turian was still alive, I assumed she'd finally gotten herself killed." Looking back, though, that was about as stupid as I could get. _Assuming_ is what gets people killed.

"Any idea where she'd be hiding now?" Jacob asks.

"None. Last time I saw her was on Omega, the day Orion cut her out. She probably stuck around on the station for a while, but that turian she was supposed to be targeting was _on Palaven_. She could be anywhere in the galaxy by now."

"And there was nothing on the console at the Noveria base to indicate her whereabouts," Liara adds, "We can track where Orion's command codes were used, but it would require even closer proximity than tracing the connection Irana found in their COMM units."

"We can't just keep wandering the relay network all week hoping to find something," Irana points out, "Are you sure there wasn't anything in there we can use?"

"I can work with EDI to do a data-mine for any helpful information, but so far I haven't found anything that could tell us where to look."

I think this over. "OK, the bait data they sent to Tali seems to have been accurate, so we have a general layout of which bases Kendrys activated. If we use that to narrow down our search, we can track the codes faster and eventually figure out a pattern. Right now, it looks like we'll have to run on trial and error—keep hitting bases until we come to one that tells us what we need to know."

"If that is what we must do," Samara states, "we should start as soon as we can."

"I'll send the data to EDI," Tali says as she does do, "Hopefully, we can find one of them soon."

Sounds like we've got a plan. Not a great one, but one that has a chance of working. So I nod, signaling to go through with it. "Alright. Liara, keep going through the Noveria data, see if we really did miss something. EDI, start working with Tali's data, try to track down those other bases. Everyone else, get back to your stations and be ready to move when we find something." Everyone agrees, so I start to head out.

Garrus is already at the door. "Shepard—"

I cut him off. "Deck 1. We need to talk." I then head through the door and out to the CIC, not paying attention to his stunned response. This is too important, it can't wait. As much as I don't want to go through with it, I want even less to keep it from him.

When I come out of the elevator, I stand in the hall between it and my cabin, leaning against the wall as I wait for Garrus to come through. It doesn't take long.

"Alright," he says the second he comes out, "Why do we need to talk?"

I look at him for a moment, wondering how to approach this. Finally, I nod to the door and lead him through it.

Once we're in my cabin and the doors are closed behind us, Garrus knows something's wrong. "What is it?"

I step over to him, grabbing his arms. "Garrus, there's something about Kendrys I can't tell the others but _you need to know_."

My tone of voice, the part beyond my control, betrays me, because the look in his eyes is the same it gives when he knows I'm fighting some emotional battle. So he does what he does when I really am in distress and prepares to do everything in his power to aid it. "Sara, it's OK, you know you can tell me anything—"

"No. First, I need you to promise me that you are _not_ going to lose it this time."

He instantly knows it must be worse than he realized. I wouldn't be worried he might fall back into Archangel habits if it wasn't very, very bad. Since he knows that, though, he's beyond apprehensive to go along with it. But the pleading in my eyes must be enough to convince him, because he finally sighs, nods, and tells me "Alright. I promise."

Just the fact that he had to force himself to makes me hesitant to let go of him at first. Somehow, though, he keeps it steady, the apprehension in his eyes fading back to what it was when we started. That "I'd do anything for you" look that's burned in my memory as much as the sound of his voice after all we've been through these past few months. And I was right: he _does_ need to know. Before I say another word, I pull back from him, rubbing my arm with my eyes on the floor. My new position makes it obvious I don't want to talk about this. But I have to. So I do. "…Kendrys was fired the day before the Orpheus Protocol was enabled. Before that…" _Tell him, Sara. Just say it._ "… _she_ was the one who put me back together."

Garrus instantly knows why I couldn't tell the others and why it was so hard for me to say it. For a split second, I see that fire in his eyes, the same one that I saw when we were hunting Sidonis—the fire of vengeance. He can't stand the thought that there's someone living out there that hurt me. That there's someone out there who spent months playing with my body like a sadistic child with a doll (at Orion's command, no less) would be enough to fuel that fire inside him to the point of tracking her down and doing even worse to her. But, like I said, it's for a split second. Because he remembers he promised me not to let that happen and he forces himself to stop thinking that way. The same way that got him injured the day we killed Orion—nearly got him killed, too. Of course, that leaves him with no real reaction, so he just says "…oh."

That leaves me at a loss, too. What am I supposed to say now?

So he just stands there in silence for a while, his only movement an awkward shift in position every few moments. "I, uh…assumed Orion did it."

"Sort of, I guess," I respond, "It was all his plan, but she was the one with 'medical expertise.' He told her what he needed…done to me"—I wince at the words but I have no other way to say it—"and then turned her loose. And, like I said about her contracts, she had a way with making it harder than it needed to be."

He just looks at me for a second before turning so that he's facing the fish tank instead. He seems…cagey.

"Are you alright?" I find myself asking.

"No. I want to do everything in my power to track her down and tear her limb from limb, but obviously that's not an option, so I really don't know what to do now."

Before I even realize it, the best answer I can give springs up inside me (living on Earth showed me a thing or two about persuasion, so I've always had a way with words): "We'll find her. We'll stop her. And we'll make her pay. But we won't let it get to us like that…or we'll end up just like her. And I. Will. _Not_. Let that happen."

He understands that. So his tension seems to ease up a little. "…no. I still want to break every bone in her body, but you're right." He sighs, looking down at the floor and rubbing his arm. "Besides, at this point, it probably wouldn't help."

I look at him, seeing what he's feeling. He's still conflicted. _Maybe he needs something to hold onto to remind him._ So, smiling to myself at the thought of it, I reach into my pocket and pull out a small box, opening it to show him. "Do you remember this?"

He gives off a small smile as he pulls out the contents. "A star sculpted from Palaven river rock. Found it at the Citadel gift shop, of all places—the profit went to the war effort."

"Appropriate enough, I guess." I take his side as he turns just enough to face me again. Then I reach over and place my hand over his, just barely feeling the star lying on his palm. His eyes meet mine again, seemingly lost in them (that always seems to happen to him; not that I don't get lost in his every now and then, too). So I give him a small smile and tell him my thoughts: "You gave it to me as a reminder of one of the best days we ever spent together. Now I'm giving it back to you as a promise that we'll have another one the moment this is over." And I close his hand around the star. "When we do, you can give it back to me…and, if we want, it can mean something even more."

He looks down at it for a moment, at how my fingers keep his wrapped around the trinket. When that moment is over, he turns back to my eyes…and smiles. "That's a plan I can get behind."

I smile back until those words remind me. "Speaking of which, I believe we had a plan to see if you were right at the casino…"

"Is now a good time?"

"Well, we have no reason not to." So I wrap my arms around him and move in to kiss him. Ten minutes later, I've reached my conclusion.

He was definitely right.

 _An hour later…_

Apparently, the squad doesn't actually have stations, because I find most of them (Garrus is still in my cabin right now and EDI is still on the bridge—of course, her body's proximity doesn't matter since she has sensors in the whole ship) in the observation deck when I come down.

"Hey, Lola," James nods as I walk in and find a seat on the couch.

"Nice to have everyone around again, isn't it?" I smile, looking around at the others.

"Yes, it is," Liara nods, "Oh, and don't worry, I'm still working on the data right now. But it always helps to take your mind off it for a moment."

"Don't I know it." As if to prove this, I pull out the book I brought down—Tolkien, of course—and turn through the pages.

Irana looks at this in confusion. "If everyone is here, I doubt you'll get much reading done."

"I've read this too many times to care. Besides, unless I'm trying to sleep, I'm like Tali: quiet is nice, but silence makes me uncomfortable."

"I should think it'd be hard to have silence being alone in your cabin seeing as how Officer Vakarian is always there."

I just barely suppress the urge to let my emotions come into my reaction. "Well, you'll forgive me for wanting to spend a little bit of time with the rest of my friends outside of combat while they're actually here. And are you going to be making cracks at our relationship this entire time?!"

"…probably, yes."

"And you gave us a hard time about bantering during the mission," Ash shakes her head at the turian.

Irana simply shrugs. "I'm sure it'll grow on me."

I turn back to the book in my hands. "It always does."

About two seconds after I've said so, the door opens and Garrus comes in.

"Hey," Ash smirks, "we were just talking about you."

"Oh, those are never good words," Garrus groans before coming over to sit down next to me.

"I was just wondering how…" Irana looks between me and him for a second again. "… _this_ happened."

"Oh!" Tali smirks, "We can tell you."

"Uh, Tali!" I quickly jump in, "We don't need any sideline commentary."

"Why not? You two seemed pretty clueless on the inside, but the rest of us saw from day one."

"Really, it's not—"

"All the comments, the way you looked at each other, the hours you spent flirting in the battery when you thought no one was noticing—"

"I knew I shouldn't have walked in here," Garrus groans, his head in his hand.

"Well, you did say yesterday that you would," Wrex comments.

"I told you," Garrus half-snaps to me.

"They knew you were checking on me," I point out, "and they know us so well I thought they wouldn't care."

"We didn't," Ashley smiles, "It was fairly obvious what you were up to."

"You'd think they'd have remedied that transparency after so long," Miranda smirks.

"Great," I sigh, turning to Garrus again, "now Irana's comments at our expense have become a crew-wide game."

"I would apologize, but this is actually amusing," Irana smirks.

"Don't tell me you're one of those turians that likes seeing humans squirm."

"Not just humans."

"Oh, great, she's a sadist-humored Garrus," Jack groans.

"What—I resent that!" Garrus snaps, "…I…have no idea how to respond, but I resent it."

"Wow, Jack, you actually left him speechless," I smirk, "Even I can't do that."

"I pride myself in my accomplishments," Jack smirks back, "Crushing an entire gunship biotically, keeping those little runts at the academy in line, silencing smug turians—"

"You crushed an entire gunship?! Don't you think that might've been helpful when we were hitting Eclipse HQ?!"

"Hey, you didn't want me coming along."

"You guys have quite the track record together, don't you?" Irana observes.

"Well, you don't save the galaxy three times without making a few friends," Liara comments.

I have to smile for that one. It is true. And these seem to be the best friends I could've asked for. Then I feel Garrus taking my hand and find my thoughts filling with what Tali described—all the times we spent together as friends and what it led up to. For all my complaints about my "so-called childhood," I wouldn't change a thing even about those days. My life really has been perfect since the _Normandy_ first took off. Nothing can take that away. …not even death.

Keeping those thoughts back (the last thing I need is to be pondering our impending doom again), I turn my gaze back over at Irana and find her looking down at her hands almost thoughtfully. "Something wrong?"

"No," she answers, "I just find it amazing that you guys could be so close."

I recognize that. That's the ponderings of someone who's never had real friends—like I would've been five years ago. "Don't tell me you had it as rough as I did."

"Well, I wasn't an orphan, but I lost my mother when I was three. Kind of kept to myself after that. My father was with the turian military on Aephus so I spent a lot of time alone. About the same time I joined the ranks, my father was killed in action. Then, back during the war, my unit was sent into Reaper territory on a mission and the Reapers found us and took out the rest of my squad. I was the only one that made it to the extraction site. Hierarchy didn't really think much of it since the mission was a success anyway—sacrifice in war is expected, after all—so I left the ranks after the war ended and went back to Aephus to join the police force. Seemed better up until now."

"Yeah," Garrus smirks, "I know from experience that the life of running around shooting mercenaries and Reaper troops makes you question police work."

"Glad to know I rank that high," I comment.

"Are we gonna have to separate you two?" Jacob smirks.

"Alright! The next person that makes a crack about me and Garrus is sleeping in the air duct!"

 _"I would be more than happy to replay my audio recordings of your conversations in the battery to relieve the tension," EDI jumps in over the COMM, "seeing as I do not require sleep."_

"Not funny, EDI!"

"It was kind of funny to me," Grunt counters with a smirk.

"Should I leave?" Garrus asks, gesturing to the door.

"Please don't," I groan, "That'll make it worse." I then notice the way Samara is looking at us. "Don't tell me you're actually taking pleasure in all this."

"On the contrary," Samara answers with a slight smile, "I believe this is the longest conversation we've ever had as a whole team."

"Great. I'll be sure to make a note of it: 'For best conversation, let the squad make fun of my romantic life.'"

"…really shouldn't have walked in here…" Garrus sighs under his breath.

"I'm sure we can find a way to keep this up all night if you're that interested," James smirks to Samara.

"I can kick you out if I have to, Lieutenant," I sneer at him, keeping it as level as I can.

He sighs, backing off. "Alright. Whatever you say, Lola. I really don't wanna see what happens when you get angry."

"I thought your name was Sara," Irana notes.

"It is," I answer, "Don't get him started."

"Well, now I'm curious. What's all this 'Lola' business about?"

"Just a nickname," James shrugs, "I do it with a lot of people."

"So for a nickname, you picked 'Lola'?"

"Yeah, my best friend growing up had an older sister named Lola—really hot sister, too."

Garrus suddenly starts paying full attention to the conversation. "Wait a minute! Have you been flirting with my girlfriend, Vega?"

"Since the day we met," I comment, "Didn't we tell you about that?"

" _What_?!"

"It's just my way!" James quickly says, "I don't mean anything by it."

"Oh, really?"

"Should we let the three of you talk this out?" Tali asks.

"No, stay. We might need witnesses!"

"Yeah," I sigh, "as much as I'd love to see you two go at it, we've got bigger problems to worry about."

"Back to business now?" Ash groans, "Way to kill the fun, Shepard."

"If I don't, this really will keep going all night. Besides, Kendrys is relentless and bloodthirsty, so we really should be worrying about it—she won't stop coming until we're dead."

"Or she is," Miranda points out.

"Yeah, given what good that did us pertaining to Orion, I'm not convinced," Jack counters, "Let's not forget those other two guys are nowhere to be found."

"Well, given what happened to the first of the three, they might not risk as much as Kendrys after we actually take her down," I say, "…but, yeah, we should probably find their registry and track them all through Liara's network to make sure this doesn't happen again."

"At least Cerberus and the Reapers won't be coming back at us like this," Tali sighs. Then she thinks that over. "…right?"

"Cerberus is definitely out," Miranda says, "and if the Reapers were coming back after what Shepard did, they would've by now. I think it's safe to say it's all down to the Shadows now."

"You _think_? Keelah, it never ends…"

"Nothing's ever easy," I groan with her, "Why should it stop getting harder?"

"Murphy's Law?" Jacob looks at me, almost surprised.

"Shepard's Law, I guess."

"Ah," Garrus nods, "'If one person wants to kill you, there's an army directly behind.'"

"Ha!" Wrex smirks, "We ought to put that on a plaque in the Hallows."

"Right next to the statue you'll inevitably erect to Shepard for curing the genophage."

"Come on, guys, give credit where credit is due," I assert, "Mordin's the one who cured it."

"Yeah, but the day the krogan make a monument to a salarian is the day Palaven has a snowstorm."

"And…" Irana is looking at her omni-tool, "…it took you all exactly 26 seconds to turn the 'down to business' talk back into friendly banter."

"OK," I consent, "I'll admit that's probably become a habit by now."

Irana just sighs, turning her attention back to us. "Seeing as how it hasn't been a distraction in the field and has eased any tension onboard the ship, I can let it go. But you were right, we do still have bigger problems."

"That was before we started talking about it. Clearly, talking about it isn't gonna get us any closer to finding Kendrys."

"So back to the banter?"

"By all means."

This is about as great as the party on the Citadel. All of us together like this…we don't get this near often enough. Somewhere along the way, I stop caring what time it is. It's only when Tali and Ash have to turn in that the squad starts clearing out of the observation deck. Even as Garrus heads back to the battery, though, I stick around. When I'm all alone here, I lay down on the couch and turn my attention back to the book I brought in with me. And when it starts to seem too silent for me, I think back on the hour (or more—no clue) preceding it and smile.

Yeah, I could get used to this.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12 – Garrus

I look down at the console in the battery, thinking over the algorithms again. But this is one of those times it's acting as a distraction. That exchange with the whole squad on the observation deck was a huge release—we all needed that—but it could only do so much. Every time I start thinking now, my mind falls back to what Shepard told me a few hours ago.

Killian Orion, the leader of the Black Shadows, was the one who used her.

But Kendrys Falcon, Orion's partner-in-crime as it were, was the one who tortured her.

 _Orion is dead. But Kendrys is still alive._ Every time that thought finds me…

 _Blood vessels manually aligned—violent reaction_

I push it back. Sara walked away from all that unscathed. Because she was too strong to be tortured. It wasn't like that to her. She fought the pain like she fought the Reapers and she won both battles for the same reason: she's Commander Shepard and nothing can get to her.

 _Skeletal system modified—full restraints necessary_

Just the thought of her in pain, though, makes me forget how she actually reacted. She's a hero, she didn't deserve any of what they did to her. …she's mine…and they had no right to touch her at all.

 _Vital signs destabilized—electrically restored_

Kendrys is the one responsible for it. While Orion stopped breathing, she walked away. The man who ordered the whole thing paid for what happened, but the woman who did it is out there and trying to kill us.

 _All internal organs pressurized and restored—extremely violent reaction_

Not if I kill her first.

 _Orpheus Protocol enabled_

The Shadows have done too much to us already. They have to pay for it. _Kendrys_ has to pay. We will find her. And when we do, I'll—

 _"…I need you to promise me that you are_ not _going to lose it this time."_

…I'll…stop her. But I won't cross the lines she crossed. I won't do that to my Shepard.

As my thoughts clear, I look down and find that I'm clutching the rail around the battery so tight my hands are aching. I quickly pull them back, letting my blood flow go back to normal. Thinking about all this is making it worse. I need to think about something else. I look down at the console for a moment, but I need something stronger, something…

 _"Sounds like you're carrying some tension. Maybe I could help you get rid of it."_

Every time that memory reaches me, I end up smirking at the thought of it. Nervous as I was back then, those days mean more to me than anything else. Well, besides the fact that I still have her with me now.

 _"I don't want something 'closer to home.' I want you."_

I wanted her, too. From the day we met. I just didn't see that until it was too late. But I got my second chance—got my _third_ chance, even. Still, part of me wishes it wasn't so true what humans say: you never know what you've got until it's gone. Lucky me, they also have that saying about if love is real, you set it free and it still comes back. Maybe Shepard was right when she said real love transcends mortality itself. Sure looks that way so far.

 _"I just want something to go right. Just once. Just…"_

 _That moment was as close to perfect happiness as I think either of us has ever gotten. The soft glow behind her emerald eyes as she looked at me, the faint smile telling me what words never could, the way she touched my scars—it was clear what she felt for me but, suddenly, thought had become impossible. Which is actually a good thing, because the silence overtaking me made the nerves clinging to me cease to exist. And when we kissed for the first time…I never imagined that would end up being one of the greatest moments of my entire life._

 _Looking back, it's been made abundantly clear she gave me all of them._

I smile as I lean back against the wall by the battery door, letting the memory play through my mind over and over again. A year ago, reminiscing like this would've driven me mad with grief. Now, it seems to be the only thing keeping me sane.

My gaze then drifts down to the weapons bench set up on the wall beside me. On the corner is a small star sculpted from Palaven river rock. The same one I gave to Shepard after our date on the Citadel the day she met with the asari Councilor, the third anniversary of the day we met. The same one she gave back to me a few hours ago as a promise of what we'll have when this is all over. If I expect her to keep her promise, I have to keep my own.

This is my answer. If I start to "lose it again," all I have to do is call back those memories of Shepard. If I'm thinking about my Sara, who fought for me, who trusted me, who went against any reason I can see and loved me…if I think about her and what we have and the promises we made today, maybe it won't be so hard to hold back.

Now that my new plan is cemented in my mind, I start to marvel at it again. Commander Sara Shepard, hero of the galaxy, the greatest soldier the Alliance has ever seen. And she fell for me. Garrus Vakarian, outcast C-Sec officer, failed vigilante. It defies any expectations I might've had. I mean, we'll both make snarky comments about how I charmed her and the crew will all give us those unwarranted observations about how we've always acted differently for each other, but everyone knows we're hardly made for each other. The shining paragon and the fiery renegade, the playful human and the wisecracking turian—not exactly the most ideal pairing of all time. Then again, Shepard has shared all those old human views about relationships having balance and science shows that opposites attract (well, we're hardly opposites, but still…). Yeah, I guess it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that we ended up together. And even if it is, you don't just question the best thing that's ever happened to you because you think you don't deserve it—not when it's been consistently proven that it really belongs to you. What we have doesn't require any explanation. Just…

The door opens. "Hard at work again?"

… _just enjoy it while you can._ I smile again before I even turn to look at her. "I was just thinking about you, actually."

She smiles for a moment before sighing, running her fingers through her hair. "Don't tell me we're starting _that_ now. I'll be opening every conversation we have with that same line."

"Did you just come by to check up on me?" I ask as I step closer to her.

She shrugs, leaning over the railing until she's sitting down on it. "Mostly. Though, I guess you could say I was having withdrawals. Once you've been with a turian, it's kind of hard to stay away."

"Yeah, I've been told I have that effect on most women."

"Are you trying to make me jealous, Vakarian?"

"No. Just playing with you again."

"Alright, I guess I walked into that one." She then looks at my eyes, which forces me to look into hers. That mesmerizing pattern of green holds all too many memories—nights spent clinging to each other, mornings I woke up to that joyful spark, stolen moments on missions when we made it clear how we felt. Losing myself in her like this goes against so many rules I should have. But I stopped caring about how she affects me about two years ago. It's only when she sighs softly, causing her eyes to close for an instant, that the spell breaks. "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this when Kendrys is out there. We're just distracting each other, not…"

I recognize where this is leading and resolve to silence it first. Instead of just taking hold of her and diving right in, though, I approach the situation the way she did on the Citadel and ease into it. I start by reaching my left hand up to her face, lightly stroking her skin.

She takes in a shuddering breath, closing her eyes again as she leans her head into my hand. "…we'll be thinking about each other instead of what needs to be done and…we won't…"

My right hand reaches over to her next, pressing to the left side of her waist at first then slowly moving up to where I can feel her heartbeat and, at the same time, let my talons slide into her hair.

She seems to lose any capability to move on her own, because the way she lays back against my hand implies she's relying on it to keep her balance and she has absolutely no resistance when it starts leading her closer to me. "…if Kendrys knows we're together then…she might use us against each other and…"

Not even paying attention to what she's saying, I close what little distance remains between us, laying my head against hers. My arms shift position enough to hold her tighter. This new arrangement has essentially made it impossible for her to come away from me, but she doesn't seem to notice she's practically trapped. Or she just doesn't care.

The way she wraps her arms around me in response indicates it's the second option. "…you and me…this is…"

"Sara?" I finally whisper in her ear.

"…hmm?"

I smirk as I move around… "Stop talking." …and kiss her.

She responds in kind, wholehearted and passionate. When she breaks off to catch her breath, she lets off a small laugh. "You stole my move."

"Are you upset I stole it or upset that it worked?" I counter.

She just smiles, leaning back in. "Neither." As soon as she's finished saying it, we're pressed together again. In this moment, as love takes over, we both—

Suddenly, the door opens and Irana walks in, causing me and Shepard to break it up simply from being startled. "Oh, good, you're both in here."

"Yeah, and we were kind of having a moment here—" I start.

"I think I found something," she continues as she steps over to the console, "You both need to hear it."

"Really, we were just—"

"Forget it," Shepard sighs, jumping down from the railing, "I don't think she even noticed."

"Oh, I noticed," Irana corrects her, "I've just elected to ignore it."

Shepard just shakes her head before turning away from my hold on her to face the female turian. "So what did you find?"

She calls up her omni-tool to show us. "I did some searching on that turian emissary you were talking about, the one Kendrys was hired to kill. I think I may have figured out who wanted him dead and why the contract would've been called off."

Shepard looks at her in amazement. " _Really_? That's…if this is real—"

"It is. Look. The emissary was putting substantial pressure on Citadel Security to investigate a smuggling ring that was shipping red sand into turian space. The head of the ring was a rather hotheaded volus, so it stood to reason that he was the one who would've set up the contract. But I did some digging and it turns out that the volus isn't one to get his hands dirty—he had his second-in-command, an asari ex-huntress, set up the contract. And the volus was the one who ended up dead the same day you found out the emissary was still alive. From what I can see about his death report, it looks like the damage to his suit that killed him was extremely calculated, too."

"Like by someone who knew how to hurt him most and had a penchant for torture," Shepard realizes, "Kendrys did it. That asari set up the contract officially against the turian but had Kendrys pull a double-cross at the last second so she could take over the ring."

"And while suspected smuggling is a gray area, a dead volus popping up in the docking bay really jumpstarts investigation. C-Sec was moving in fast and the ring had to get off the station. Looks like, under their new command, they boarded a ship headed to asari space—Nevos in the Silean Nebula, to be precise."

"If we can catch them, we can take them out of operation and figure out how they contacted Kendrys at the same time. Nice work, Irana."

Irana simply shuts off her omni-tool. "I do this sort of thing all the time on Aephus. When I told your asari friend what I was doing, she gave me limited access to her database. It's quite extensive."

"…yeah, she's a…really good information broker. EDI, did you get all that?"

 _"Yes, Shepard," EDI answers, "We are currently most of the way across the galaxy from the Silean Nebula, but we can arrive within four hours once the course has been set."_

"Good. Go ahead and tell Joker to head that way and we'll start getting ready."

"Guess I should go check my weapons then," Irana says before leaving the battery.

"Wow," I note as the door closes behind her, "she really is a good detective."

"Suddenly, I'm sort of glad we let her tag along," Shepard adds.

"I'm sure we would've figured it out eventually."

"Right." Then she leans back against the console and tilts her head to smirk at me. "So we have four hours. What now?"

"Well, for starters," I smirk back as I close in on her, "I believe we were in the middle of something."

"We were? Refresh my memory?"

"Gladly." I wrap both arms around her waist and pull her over, pressing myself against her.

After we've been kissing for a while, she pulls back. "Oh, yeah. I believe we were _here_." Then she grabs hold of me and starts up again even more fervently, so close I can feel her heart pounding as I—

 _"Shepard," EDI suddenly cuts in, "Tali wants to speak with you."_

Shepard groans as she pulls away from me. "Why does this keep happening?!"

 _"The crew deliberately time their calls to when they know you and Garrus are alone."_

Shepard responds by giving a look to the intercom. "Let me guess. That was a joke."

 _"No. Jokes have specific structures._ That _was messing with you."_

Shepard just keeps glaring. …which is strangely attractive.

 _"If I may, Commander, the rest of the crew are as happy to have you returned to us as Garrus is"_ —I find that hard to believe— _"and they might simply wish to share your attention."_

Shepard looks at the intercom curiously. "That's…an interesting way to look at it." She sighs. "Alright, tell Tali I'm headed down. And…thanks, EDI." She then turns back to me. "Yet another reason we need to spend as much time together as we can while it's still possible."

"Yeah, well…" I glance briefly down at the star-shaped river rock on the weapons bench, remembering what it signifies. "…if this goes down the way we have it planned, we'll have the rest of our lives together anyway."

Shepard smiles brightly. "Nothing would make me happier." Then she kisses me one last time and walks out.

I watch her go before turning back to the console. It takes a moment for the numbers on the display to start making sense again ( _Why does she always have to make it so hard to think straight?_ ), but I still go through them carefully. More carefully than usual, actually, as if surgically checking the code—

Crap. Why'd I have to say "surgically"?

 _What I saw at the console EDI unlocked on the Omega base made it clear what they'd done. How the Shadows—how_ Kendrys _—had pieced her together while she was fully conscious. I'll never be able to forget it. Shepard and I have made up for it, or at least she wants me to believe we have, but some part of me will always regret that I couldn't save her from it. They were careful not to damage her and there weren't even many scars when they were done…but I know her well enough to_ feel _them_ under _her skin._

I only notice I'm clenching my fists when I feel my talons start digging into my palm so tight that, were I not wearing my gloves, I'd be drawing blood. Luckily, the stress on my hands snaps me out of it long enough to switch gears.

 _So instead, I think of the moment I had Sidonis in my sights. Or rather, when Shepard was blocking my sights. I was all but begging her to move back and let me end this, but she wouldn't let me. She wouldn't let me cross this line. She finally gave her last argument ("Look at him, Garrus, he's not alive. There's nothing left to kill.") and some part of me knew it was right. To give her case, though, she leaned back to fleetingly look my way._

 _The split second she was looking towards me, I saw it in her eyes. The look itself was the same one she had when the squad was facing situations like this in the field—"Justice," she'd tell us, "not vengeance." But the look in her eyes read something entirely different: "I know you, Garrus. You'll do the right thing."_

 _She was still a step back from him when she turned back. At any other angle, I'd have a clear shot—she must've seen that, so she must've been trusting I wouldn't take the risk. Whatever part of me was still itching to pull the trigger was begging to go through with it, but I didn't. I don't know if it's because she was right or because I wasn't willing to take that chance. But ten seconds later…_

 _"Just…go. Tell him to go."_

I sigh, leaning against the console again. I really don't like remembering that day, but at least it got…the _worse_ thoughts out of my head.

Then I look down at the console completely. I remember going over this particular algorithm before. _Go with it, Vakarian,_ I tell myself, _Anything to forget the rest._ So I let the memory crawl into my mind…

 _It was a few hours after rescuing Admiral Koris on Rannoch. Just five minutes ago, I had gotten a call from my father that he and Solana were trying to get off Palaven. It didn't sound like it was going well. Now I was standing here, going over the same algorithm over and over because I couldn't focus long enough to actually check it without my thoughts drifting back to the worry for my family's sake._

 _"Looks like it's going pretty slow in here. Did you calibrate yourself dry already?"_

 _I smirked at the comment itself. I smiled at the voice that gave it._ Oh, well. Can't focus either way, might as well let it be for a good reason. _"Just thinking some things over."_

 _Shepard didn't take my side like usual. She stepped over and took my hand. "Yeah, I heard the whole thing."_

 _At the back of my mind, I wondered at how she'd managed to walk in without me even noticing (_ Guess I had a lot going on at the time _). Mainly, I just sighed, grasping her hand in return. "I hate this. Not knowing where they are or what's happening or…"_

 _She leaned against me with a sigh of her own. "Just be thankful you have a family to worry about."_

 _I turned to look at her. She almost never talked about wishing she had known her parents or anything of the sort. Hearing her say it like that made me shift my concern to her. So much so that I pressed my free hand to her face and led her to meet my eyes so I could tell her "You do have a family."_

 _She simply looked at me for a moment, considering my words as if weighing whether they were true or not. When that moment was over, a soft smile crept into her eyes. "I know." Then she used her free hand to pull me closer and kissed me. I gladly reciprocated, not willing to withdraw for anything. Until she did, leaning her head against mine almost sadly. "Where are we going, Garrus?"_

 _"We're going somewhere? I thought we were sticking around Rannoch for a while. You know, on account of the whole geth situation—"_

 _"You know what I mean!"_

 _I did. So I let my hand fall away from her face, not letting the other come free from its grasp on her own hand, and wrapped it around her. "I don't know what's going to happen. But no matter what comes after the Reapers…I'm never leaving your side again."_

 _She let her smile come back, brighter this time, and leaned against me again, letting me hold her close. "I can work with that."_

The memory itself replaces my conflicted emotions with pleasant ones again. I can always count on her to do that for me. _Just have to remember that…_ But something about the memory strikes an all new nerve.

 _"Where are we going, Garrus?"_

That question has a different meaning now. Or different implications, at least. Back then, our entire future—even our own survival—was a mystery. Now it's pretty clear what our path is, but as to moving forward—

I cut myself off when my gaze drifts back to the weapons bench again. Or, more accurately, to the star-shaped rock lying on it. Not only does the rock itself have a special meaning, but I have unfinished considerations a few days old that I need to act on. And it could help me with them.

 _She did say it could mean something more when I gave it back, if we wanted to._

Smiling to myself almost mischievously at the idea, I turn to look at the intercom myself. "EDI? Could you do me a favor?"


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13 – Shepard

I barely care that I'm basically "smiling wistfully" as I lean against the wall of the elevator and wait for it to reach deck 4. I just keep my eyes closed and hold to the memory of how Garrus and I kissed before I came down here. I replay the moment in my mind until the doors before me open and I have to step out. Then I move around to the main engineering deck, finding the friend I'm down here to meet on the walkway to the drive core. I stop moving towards her when I notice something interesting.

Tali is turning a rock in her hands. The rock I gave her when we landed on Rannoch.

I smile as I take her side. "You really carried it around with you?"

I'd like to think I can tell after all this time that Tali is smiling back behind her helmet. "Yeah. Whenever I left Rannoch." She places it back in one of her suit's pockets.

"So should I be calling you 'Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch' now?"

She laughs. "No, it's still 'vas Normandy.' Most of the other quarians readopted our home-world's name, but I couldn't. The _Normandy_ is too important to me. And my people have come to truly respect the title now, given what the _Normandy_ has done for us all." She then shifts, rubbing her arm tentatively. "Speaking of which, I can never thank you enough for helping us reclaim Rannoch. My people might not be alive right now, let alone as well off as the geth have made us, without you."

"You had as much of a hand in it as I did, Tali. Don't discount that."

"Not like that. You keep throwing us credit for what you did."

"It's not like I could've done it without you. Any of you. I should be thanking all of you for sticking by me for so long."

"What can I say, Shepard? You're a hero. You inspire loyalty." She then sighs and turns to face me completely. "Which brings me to the reason I wanted to talk to you."

I instantly look at her in astonishment. "You're questioning loyalty now?"

"No, no! Nothing like that. Believe me, I'm not the best judge of character—I'd never have gotten caught up in that Fist debacle otherwise."

"You did the best you could. Don't beat yourself up about it." When she responds with half a shrug, I give her a brief look. "Alright, then what _is_ the problem?"

She hesitates to answer. That's a little unnerving in itself. "OK, forgive me for asking—I'm sure Garrus has already asked, anyway—but you've seemed a little tense since this all started. I wanted to make sure you were alright…and that you still will be when this all comes to a head."

I guess I should've known someone would ask. But the fact that Tali is the one who ended up doing it and not Miranda or Liara or someone like that makes it a little hard to give a straight yet convincing answer. "I'm fine, it's just…the Shadows have put us all through a lot and I'm pretty anxious to get rid of them. …I'm fairly convinced this is never gonna end unless we do."

Tali, thankfully, understands completely. "We'll stop them, Shepard. And whatever happens afterward, we'll all be right here with you."

She's right. And…it's actually pretty nice to hear assurances like this from someone besides Garrus. So I find myself smiling, almost letting out a small laugh. "Yeah, I know you will. Thanks, Tali."

"Hey. What are friends for?"

"And you certainly have been a good one."

"I…I try to be. It's certainly been a fun ride being friends with you and the others. Definitely kept me on my toes."

I smirk at the comment. Though there's something I need to ask her… "Seems you were doing a little more than staying on your toes without me around to keep you all in line."

Tali looks at me, almost flustered. "Uh…I don't know what you're talking about."

I step closer to her, checking to make sure no one can hear us. "Tali, be honest with me. You know it won't bother me one way or the other what the answer is." I'm hesitant to come out with it, but it's too late to turn back now and, like I said, the answer's not going to make a difference. So I say it: "…was there something between you and Garrus while I was… _out of it_?"

"What?! No! Of course not!"

"Tali, he's told me about what happened before I came back. All of it. And what he couldn't tell me, Liara and EDI have. Every time something happened to him, you were the first one there."

She sighs. "All I can tell you is what I told him: I had already lost one of my closest friends in the entire galaxy and I wasn't ready to lose another. I'm still not."

"By that logic, Liara would've been just as concerned."

"She was. But Garrus and I…I'd like to think we have a special connection—we've been through more together than with anyone else on the ship. Well, besides you." She then turns back to the drive core panel, as if searching for a distraction. "Even if I had felt something, though, I can guarantee he wouldn't have reciprocated. He was still too in love with you. He couldn't let you go, he couldn't move on. Nothing was going to change that except getting you back. If you hadn't…there's really no telling what would've happened to him."

I know that. All the times he's told me he couldn't live without me anymore, all the nights he poured his heart out about the days the poison was in his blood, just the way he acts around me—it's pretty clear the last year destroyed him. "…yeah…sounds like he's a real wreck when he's in mourning."

"I'll say."

I visibly jump, Tali moving in agreement with a slight yelp as she steps back from the panel.

Liara is leaning against the wall separating the drive core chamber from the main engineering deck.

I give her a look. "How long have you been standing there?"

"About ten seconds." While I silently let myself be relieved that she didn't overhear any of me and Tali discussing the possibility of a turian-quarian therapy romance, she steps over to us. "It's always obvious when you're talking about Garrus. You have that gleam in your eyes, that curve in your posture, that tone in your voice—"

"Right!" I quickly cut her off, "Thanks for letting me know!"

Liara holds her hands out. "I simply wished to inform you that I looked into the smuggling ring Irana discovered, the one that hired Kendrys after she left the Shadows. Tracing their activity indicates that their new hideout is on Nevos, but I could not find the exact coordinates. We will have to scan the planet's surface before we can land."

I nod. "Alright, I'll be on deck 2 when we move in."

Liara nods back and starts to walk out. She stops after two steps. "And…" She smiles back to me. "…pay no attention when the others prod you, Shepard. We're all beyond happy that you and Garrus are together."

I get that. When people care about you, they want what's best for you. There's no denying Garrus is what's best for me.

"You've both made it clear how much you need each other," Liara continues, "I highly doubt that, in all of turian history—possibly even in all of human history—any two people have ever loved each other more than you and Garrus do."

"You're all but made for each other," Tali agrees, "…and you deserve to be happy together. As long as you can."

Liara reaches over to place her hand comfortingly on my shoulder. "I hope that, one day, you'll find the peace you're searching for."

I take a moment to let her words sink in, commit them to memory so I can hold to them later and always know they're true. _I can always count on my closest friends to give me reason to hope._ I finally smile, letting her know that. "Thank you, Liara. And, trust me…when the Shadows are well and truly gone…we will." With that said, I walk out, headed to the elevator. But instead of going straight to the battery or my cabin, I go down to deck 5 and start making the rounds again, talking to all my squad-mates—the friends that have kept me going this way for so long—like I used to do during the war. I spend the next hour this way, ending in the battery. Then I spend as much time in there as I possibly can.

 _Three hours later…_

Garrus and I come into the CIC together (obviously) and find the squad already waiting by the bridge.

"How close are we?" I ask as I move around the galaxy map towards the cockpit.

 _"We are entering the Teyolia system now," EDI reports, "We can begin scanning for the smugglers' location once we are within the Nevos atmosphere."_

"Alright, take us in," I give the order as I cross the bridge to where Joker sits at the pilot seat, "If we're lucky, we can finish this in time to actually get a decent night's sleep."

"We're hardly ever _that_ lucky," Garrus points out.

"I don't know," Irana comments offhandedly, "You both seemed pretty into it last night."

"You were with Garrus _all night_?" Joker smirks at me over his shoulder.

"What's the problem? We've been doing that every night since she came back," Garrus comments, clearly not noticing my fleeting attempt to keep him from opening those gates.

Joker instantly starts at it. "Really? Wow—"

"If you value your life, you'll stop right there," I sneer.

"I'm just curious. Did all this have to do with kissing?"

"Grow up, Joker. Not everything does."

"Right. Some stuff's about groping."

"Cut it out!" Miranda steps up, "We have bigger things to worry about than these two… _canoodling_."

Garrus blinks. "Uh…my translator didn't catch that last one." He turns to me. "Should we be offended?"

I sigh. "No, that's as accurate as it's getting."

"Shepard," EDI's body calls from the co-pilot seat, "we are entering the Nevos atmosphere. I am connecting with Liara's database to cross-reference the smugglers' activity with detected anomalies now."

"Good. Let me know when you find—"

"I have found them."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"There is a shipping facility in the outskirts of Astella, the capital. It appears to have been abandoned during the Reaper occupation of this quadrant and subsequently claimed by the smuggling ring when they moved their operations here."

"Sounds like we've got our target, then. Everyone to the shuttle bay, get ready to move in."

As the squad moves out, Joker looks back at me. "Alright, have fun. Don't get into too much trouble out there."

"Remember who you're talking to, Joker!" I call back with a smirk as I follow the others to the elevator.

Fifteen minutes later, we're approaching the shipping facility. Since it's occupied solely by a ring of smugglers instead of a horde of trained assassins and said smugglers only moved in over the last couple months, the security is far lower than what we're used to. Only five guards on the outside (one of which is a sniper, but still) and one security measure—the apparently advanced lock on the front door.

This is going to be almost disappointingly easy.

"There's no security cameras that I can see," I tell the others, "We won't be tripping any alarms if we go in hot. Get ready to jump out and fire, don't let them get a shot in until—"

Wrex and Grunt suddenly both go charging in, letting off battle cries. After five seconds of combat noise echoing from the other side of our cover and a resulting two seconds of utter silence, I step out, the rest of the squad behind me, and find all of the guards dropping dead.

I look between my two krogan companions and the carnage they incited… "…or…"

"Glad those two are on our side…" Irana comments under her breath as she follows us to the door. Once we're there, she looks over the lock. "Alright, it's a military grade lock, just the kind of thing skilled smugglers could get their hands on. But if I can just bypass the wiring, it—"

Jack sighs, rolling her eyes, and fires off her gun at the lock, causing a short circuit that makes the door open.

"…your way works, too."

I smirk, shaking my head as I take the front and head through the door. "Nice to know we'll never have to overcomplicate things with you guys around." My comment is rewarded with the sound of Grunt's signature laugh.

Once we're on the move farther into the facility, I ready my assault rifle and prepare myself for a fight. This is the kind of mission I can get behind. As Garrus would say, "Just like old times." So, just like those days, it's not one minute past the entrance before the opposition arrives. Five of them and 14 of us, the resulting skirmish is over in four seconds. Like I said, disappointingly easy. _Oh, well. Call it a warm-up for the big one that's inevitably going to follow when we track down Kendrys._

Of course, then we turn to go through a door to the room outside the main shipping lines and we set off the actual security. Apparently, our targets have been smuggling mechs. The second I see that us moving has activated a heavy one, I tell everyone to "Get to cover!" The next second, we all do right as the mech starts firing. I peer around the corner of the shipping crates I'm using as cover and see that the big mech has set off a chain reaction that makes every other mech in the room come online at the same time, two of which are also heavies. Whichever smuggler designed this trap is a pretty good techie.

Luckily for us, though, mine are better than theirs.

"Garrus, EDI, Tali," I say. Once they're all three focused on me, I give off the plan, unable to resist a devious smirk as I do: "Take the big one."

They all catch on immediately, Garrus visibly reflecting my reaction to the plan. Then they make use of a strategy that we got to use far too few times in the old days. Focusing on the heavy mech at the center of it all, they set off a three-part attack: Garrus overloads the shields, EDI burns through the armor…and then Tali hacks it and sends it tearing through the rest of the enemy forces. I should probably not take so much delight in watching the mechs' symphonic explosions, but it's just too great to pass up.

Clearly, the others agree, because most of them are reacting gleefully and James has outright busted out laughing, even going so far as to say "Oh, that was awesome."

As soon as there's only one mech standing, I pull my gun back out and fire until it's down. "Alright, we're clear. Let's keep moving." So I head across the room to the entrance to the hub of the facility. Predictably, we open the door and are immediately met with gunfire from smuggled weapons. We duck behind the nearest cover and start at the fight. There's only nine of them, so we have the advantage in numbers again. Really, it's a shame we couldn't have always just brought the whole team on every mission, but…

First target's a human; focusing fire for three seconds overwhelms their shields and takes them down. Second's a turian; same method with the whole squad firing harder and our strategy keeps working. A sabotage from Tali breaks through a volus' suit, a warp attack from Liara followed by a powerful and concentrated throw from Samara takes out one of the asari, James and Ash combine shots at a hanar—three more smugglers later, the last one standing is the asari leader of it all. She's mine.

Before anyone else can make a move, I jump over my cover and rush over. As I'm doing that, the others break down her barrier and leave her exposed for me. Then I fire off a concussive shot at her and she falls back over the railing she's next to, dropping to the floor ahead of me with enough force to crack her left leg in half. She's got no way out now. All that's left is to finish this.

The asari growls furiously as she pulls herself the least bit upright, muttering something about the authorities. "We're not cancelling the shipments." She grabs her gun back. "You—!"

Garrus, of course, shoots first, hitting the gun with a concussive shot of his own and throwing it across the room.

"You're already out of business," I snap at the asari smuggler. Then I step closer, moving in for the interrogation we came for. "You hired an assassin three months ago. How did you contact her?"

The asari suddenly seems slightly confused. "The Falcon? What's she got to do with—?"

Bang.

I haven't even realized I just heard a gunshot before the asari drops dead. But the sight of it instantly wakes up my soldier's instinct. "Sniper!" I call back to the others even as I race back to cover. I don't make it that far (neither do any of my squad-mates, as far as I can see) before the sniper, or someone they brought along, fires off explosive ammunition at the center of the room, throwing us all off our feet. The blast is immediately followed by a rain of bullets, which forces me to crawl to the nearest cover before I can make sure everyone is alright.

After I've confirmed no one's injured, I'm instantly kicking myself as hard as I can inside. It only makes sense that the Shadows would've figured out we'd track down the smugglers to find Kendrys. Here I was thinking it'd be disappointingly easy. And it was…because it was a trap.

"Does anyone have eyes on the targets?" I call into my COMM, the others too far away to hear me otherwise over the sound of constant gunfire.

 _"I see them!" Jacob responds before opening fire with both biotics and his gun._

I follow his line of sight and find the Shadows coming in through the windows again, this time dropping swordsmen onto the shipping lines. We're all behind cover, so the melee fighters will overwhelm us if too many get in close; knowing this, I instantly start firing at them, signaling most of the others to act in kind and let our more ranged fighters like Garrus and Irana take care of the snipers. Thankfully, that much pressure takes out said threats before they can reach us and the turians manage to hold off the rest. And as an added bonus, my trigger doesn't click until they do. I quickly duck down behind my cover to switch clips. It's a good thing I do, too, since my new angle shows me the archer on the catwalks over our heads aiming right at me. Moving on instinct, I roll away as the arrow comes down at me, winding up in Irana's cover.

"Archer on the catwalks," I inform her as the cover I was using crumbles from the impact of the apparently explosive arrow.

"I got this one," she answers, readying her gun. She then fires off the specialized shot. The archer takes it in the gut, only to be instantly electrocuted. "Stinger ammo—really rare."

I blink in amazement. "Yeah, that's…very useful, thank you." I then look at my rifle, considering the incendiary ammo I always arm it with. "Don't suppose you've got more of that, do you?"

"What part of 'really rare' didn't you get?"

"Fair enough. Just put it to good use."

"Gladly." So she ducks out of cover just long enough to shoot down the next three Shadows. As she withdraws to switch clips, she gestures to me. "All yours."

"Thank you." Then I make my move, shooting down every Shadow in my range. One in the back, two on the shipping lines, one at the window, two on the catwalks. Something's not right. Last I saw, there was another one—

Before I can finish doing the math, a shot goes off in my direction. From our side of the battlefield. I look and see that the bullet came from Garrus' sniper rifle. Then I follow the trajectory of his shot and find the last Shadow, dropping from the position they were aiming at me and Irana from. _Yeah, that figures._ I send Garrus a quick nod of thanks before leaning around my cover and letting off my last five shots, taking out the last two Shadows standing.

"It looks clear for now," Samara reports as we come out of cover, holstering our weapons.

"There could be more," I tell the others, "Search the area and try to—"

 _"Don't bother. You'll be dead sooner or later. Might as well let this go a little longer."_

I turn around, my hand on my gun.

Pointless. The voice is coming from a COMM unit off a dead Shadow. But I recognize that voice. And when I realize who it belongs to, I know why. In my mind, I see dark hair that blends into shadows of lonely nights, eyes the color of honey that carry the sting of countless hours of agony, the face I associate with days of hopeless pain when I was lost in my own body. The same fury that rose inside me toward Orion comes back now, tied to a new name:

"Kendrys."


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14 – Garrus

I feel that vengeful fire rising inside me as soon as Shepard gives the name, but I keep it back. What am I supposed to do? She's on the other side of a COMM signal and there's no telling where that other side is—she could be halfway across the galaxy right now. Instead, I focus on the voice. So this is the infamous Kendrys Falcon. My new least favorite person in the galaxy (especially given how all other candidates are dead).

Shepard steps over to the fallen Shadow whose COMM unit is ringing with the malicious voice. "Hiding behind your cannon fodder assassins like your boyfriend? Too scared to come out and face us?"

 _"Call me a coward again and you'll find my methods growing steadily worse."_

"I didn't say you were. Orion, though—"

 _"Riddle me this, Shepard: why speak ill of the dead?"_

"Well, there was certainly plenty of ill to speak of."

 _"This coming from his personal pet project. Not to say you weren't our golden ticket, mind you."_

"I'm nobody's pet!"

 _"Oh, really? I saw you with that turian of yours, I'd say he's got you on a leash. Then again, I guess it's more the other way around, isn't it?"_

I can't keep myself from growling before storming closer to jump in myself: "If you're so interested in me, maybe you should come and take a shot for yourself."

 _"Oh, I will. Up close and personal. But I like to have fun with my contracts, especially when I'm the one that wants them dead so bad. Although, I guess your girlfriend knows that better than you would."_

 _That does it!_ Without even thinking, I draw my gun and aim at the source of my fury. "Just so you know, I'm one word away from pulling the trigger!"

 _"Really? You're gonna shoot a corpse? And I thought I was crazy."_

"Oh, I'm crazy, but I'd be more than happy to switch targets. Just as soon as you stop hiding like a sick varren and come face us."

"You'll find 13 more waiting right behind it," Wrex asserts as he takes a step up.

 _"I'm shaking in my boots. Why don't you come find me?"_

" _We will_ ," Shepard snaps, "And when we do, you're going to wish we never had."

 _"Uh-huh. You're very intimidating. Is that what you wanted to hear?"_

"Nah," Grunt growls, "'Stop pounding my spine in' would work, too!"

 _"OK! That's more like it!"_

"Oh, that's just great," Ashley groans, mostly to herself, "She's so sadistic she'd be happy if we hurt her."

 _"You could always make it quick to deny me the satisfaction. Can't see any other reason to, though, since I'd never do the same for you."_

"Look, lady! Your man was a power-hungry psychotic with a thirst for blood as big as a Reaper and a single-minded persistence that broke through the life/death barrier like a battering ram!"

 _"…exactly! You do know who you're talking to, right?! And you should be thankful that barrier opened both ways because of him or your precious commander wouldn't be alive today, now would she?!"_

"I was thankful enough the first time someone restored me for their own selfish purposes!" Shepard snaps, "No offense to Miranda, but I'm sick of people tossing me from one end of the galaxy to the other and back, dead or alive, just because they think I'm the only one up to it! My life is back, yes, but it's better without you or any of your psychotic cronies in it!"

The next second passes with no response. The next one does, too, and is even more unnerving. Then Kendrys seems to get angrier, because I could swear I hear her either punching a table or throwing something across the room she's in. _"Your life is_ over _! We gave you your chance and I'm taking it back. And for what you took from me, I'm not going to make it any easier on you. For every second it took you to turn on the Crucible, I'll give you an hour in even worse pain. Not from injuring you, either…from hurting your friends. You know what I can do, you've seen me at work—I know 1001 ways to torture all of them that are even worse. So tell me…if I had your turian out of your reach, what would hurt more? Hearing him scream…or the silence when I stopped?"_

I don't get the chance to build up a reaction before it's lost in Shepard's. The way she's tensing up isn't like her. …neither is the way she finally draws her pistol and shoots it at the wall before crouching down around the COMM unit with a fire in her eyes that I can't even describe. "If you so much as touch them, you aren't going to live long enough to regret it. And believe me when I say I have my own ways of ensuring that."

 _"…well…there's my answer." She sighs. "As much as I've enjoyed this little conversation, I actually have another contract in progress that I need to be tending to. This guy's been screaming so hard, I'm surprised they haven't heard it across the pond already. But don't worry…you're next."_

That's when a shot goes off and hits the COMM unit, dismantling it. I quickly turn to see who fired and find one last Shadow in the window, already retreating.

"Outside!" Shepard gives the order, "After them!" She races to the back door of the facility, the rest of us following shortly behind. The Shadow is nearly out of range by the time we get that far. Shepard starts moving as fast as her feet can carry her trying to catch up—

 _Bang!_

The Shadow suddenly drops dead.

I turn to look at the squad in confusion, wondering who would've taken that shot.

Irana has her Widow out and is still aiming until I look her way.

Shepard instantly starts glaring at her.

"What? I thought you wanted them dead!"

"Not yet! They were obviously in direct contact with Kendrys if they knew when to make that shot."

She's right. I sigh, putting my gun away. "I'll go check the body, see if anything's still running."

"It's not like they would've told us anything anyway," Irana is still arguing when we make it over there, "And how could we be sure they wouldn't have tried to kill us?"

"They had a chance when they deactivated the COMM unit," Samara points out, "They did not take it."

"Besides, Kendrys wouldn't allow it," Shepard sighs, "You heard her. She wants it slow."

I understand that better than any of the others. I know she would. Because only someone who believes in "If you want something done right, do it yourself" would go as far as she has. "…she wants to take us herself. She wants us to suffer. She can't trust her goons to do that."

"Then why has she been sending said goons to do it?" Irana points out.

"Because they don't have orders to take all of us at once," Shepard answers, "She knows that killing one of us makes all the others suffer—that's exactly what she needs to happen for her brilliant plan to work. But one Shadow wouldn't have been that big a threat against all of us when we had our shields up."

"We don't know that!" Irana snaps, "Just because the great Commander Shepard and her pet Archangel say so doesn't mean that—"

Those words make me freeze, halfway through searching the body. "…I never told you that."

Irana stops and turns her attention to me, everyone else following. "What?"

I turn to face her, the simple glance gradually turning to a glare as I come back to my feet and become certain of the truth: "I never said I was Archangel!"

"Yes, you did. Back on the ship—"

"No, he didn't," Shepard confirms. She moves to take my side, focused suspiciously on Irana. "How did you know who he was?"

Irana simply looks between the two of us for a second. Which becomes worse when the rest of the squad is on our side, too, all looking to her for an explanation. After a moment, she considers the situation… Finally, she sighs. "Guess my cover's blown. Although, I can't say I'm not a bit relieved. You have no idea how hard it was pretending I could actually _stand_ any of you people!" Shock and confusion take hold as she keeps her distance from us, the wisecracking turian we'd started to become familiar with no longer present. "It's not just the 'bird' in me talking when I say the krogan were the worst. Not to mention 'Subject Zero'—I'm surprised the rest of you even put up with her for so long." Wrex, Grunt, and Jack all—regrettably predictably—grow livid at those comments, Jack's biotics even lighting up as she rages. "Then there's the quarian who doesn't realize her place is in a drive core and not on the battlefield, the Prothean-obsessed asari who thinks she'd last five minutes in the real world instead of a broker's cache, the AI pretending to have any place with organics—and _you_!" Then she turns enraged to me. "The Primarch's great advisor, a failed vigilante in love with a _human street rat_?! You're not just a disgrace to the hierarchy, I'm surprised you still call yourself a turian!"

I can't keep myself from giving off a predatory growl under my breath as I glare even harder. Insulting me will get you nowhere, but saying I have no reason or no right to love Shepard or insulting her when I'm around—that'll get you a bullet in the head. Or worse.

"You bosh'tet!" Tali growls what we're all thinking, "Was this what you were thinking the whole time?!"

"What can I say?" Irana shrugs, an infuriatingly smug smirk on her face, "I'm the best actress in the galaxy."

"You're about to be the most dead!" Wrex growls.

"Wait," Shepard holds him back.

"For what?! I'd say this pyjak needs to pay for playing us—!"

"Exactly! Why pretend? Why go to all this trouble unless…?" Then she realizes what the rest is. This time, when she turns her attention entirely to Irana, she does so with her gun drawn. "…unless you were spying on us!" That leads the rest of us to follow her example and aim our guns at our newfound target. "You're a spy for the Shadows!"

"Wow, look who finally caught on!" Irana sighs, "I swear, whatever starless corner of dark space the Reapers are cramped into is less dim than the bunch of you!"

"We might not be all that bright by your standards," Jack sneers, "but at least we're still alive."

Irana scoffs. "I'm not dead yet."

"You're right. My watch is about five seconds fast!" Then she strikes, tossing a powerful biotic attack in the direction of the turian spy.

Irana is flung back about 15 meters from the force, landing harshly on the ground.

Shepard doesn't seem to even consider any other options before raising her gun and preparing to fire. Before she can take the shot, though, a beeping sound echoes from our feet. One look down and it's clear what's causing it.

Irana dropped a mine our way when Jack's biotics hit her.

"Get back!" Shepard calls as she turns to do so herself. We don't make it two feet before the mine goes off anyway, throwing us all back and producing an uncomfortable impact with the ground of our own.

Irana, naturally, gets up first. The vicious glare she's throwing our way is painful in itself, but she still readies her weapons. "Finally. A fight I can actually enjoy." Before the rest of us can get into the fight, she fires straight at Shepard.

Her shields take the majority of the damage, but they were already depleted by the preceding explosion and the bullet still penetrates her armor. She can't keep herself from crying out on contact as the force throws her back slightly, a wound in her abdomen. For a split second, I can convince myself that it won't be too bad—her shields could've guarded from the majority of the power behind a cryo shot and what was left would only slow the bleeding, actually help her keep fighting. The rest of the second, though, is spent in panic when the shot gives off an electric charge instead. Shepard is down, too weak to get up and join the fight. She needs time to work off the shock, get the bullet out, and close the wound.

Which she can't do if Irana shoots again.

This time, I let my anger out just enough that I let it decide how I respond. So I overload Irana's shield, throwing her back before she can pull the trigger, then I draw my gun and open fire. The shots do enough damage that she's forced to duck behind cover. Good. That gives me a chance to switch clips and then close in on her. I move before the rest of the squad is even back in position to join the fight, preparing my weapon for an attack to flush her out so I can end this.

She jumps first. She moves around her cover, getting behind me before I have a chance to react, and draws her omni-blade, driving it towards me. I've gotten hit there before, though, and my reflexes have improved, allowing me to turn out of the way and then face her with my gun at the ready. She turns with it, driving the omni-blade up against my gun to lock us in place. I use all the strength I have to fight her off, turn my aim back towards her without letting her blade come free and go past my armor and into my flesh. I can't hit her without exposing myself in this position, but that doesn't mean I can't break off our deadlock. I fight off her blade's hold on my weapon and turn the aim to our feet. Then I pull the trigger, setting off the concussive shot between us to throw us both back.

She recovers fast, to her credit. But instead of immediately striking (she dropped her gun and her omni-blade just shorted out), she turns to look at me, a violent smirk alight in her suddenly fiery dark eyes. "At least you're not as slow this time, Vakarian. Of course, a broken heart does things to your head, doesn't it?"

For a moment, I have no idea what she's talking about. But then the gears start turning. The moves she's making in this fight seem familiar. "A broken heart" implies that she's saying we met at some point between the Battle for Earth and the assault on Omega. Maybe she was in one of the fights with the Shadows or…or…

…the way she drew her omni-blade on me while I was reaching for my gun. I saw that before, that's why I knew the move and how to counter it.

 _I felt the blade slide between my bones as the nighttime darkness concealed my assailant. The first night that my dreams of my supposedly lost_ kalwen _started to break me down and tear me apart._

Irana Zeranos, turian Shadow—the only kind that would've gone unnoticed on Palaven until slipping into darkness and moving in for the kill. Looking back, I should've seen it before; I saw her in combat and every person has a different style in those situations that can't be copied. But, whether or not I missed it before, I can see it now.

She's the one who poisoned me.

Unconsciously, my hand finds its way to the place the knife struck me. The sight of Irana readying her gun again, though, snaps me out of it so that I take aim at her in return. Before either of us can pull a trigger, Wrex makes good on his word and comes charging in. Irana is forced to roll out of the way, leaving another mine behind. If Wrex were about 100 pounds lighter, he could probably stop himself in time to avoid setting it off. No such luck, though. At least this one only catches me and him and leaves the others open to take up the struggle. But, for every upside, there's a downside: Wrex and I are close enough to the explosion to take damage this time. Not so much that our shields don't keep us from getting injured, but enough that it takes a little longer to get back up and into it.

As I get back up and check my rifle again, I watch Irana going at it with the rest of the squad. She's actually holding her own. By herself. Against ten of us. No Shadow we've ever met before has been able to get half this far except Orion himself (and Shepard, if we're counting her). How—?

Oh, crap. She must be one of the two lieutenants that were left standing after we took out the Omega base. _…well, this isn't going to be easy…_

Still, I rush back into the fight, laying down the covering fire needed for the biotics on the squad to have maneuverability to strike harder. At the very least, this—accompanied by how Grunt charges in like Wrex was cut off from doing—wears her down and leaves her exposed. But the second she realizes she's slowing down, she drops another mine, forcing us to draw back long enough for her to get herself back in the game. To make matters worse, she's seen us in action, she knows what to expect us to do.

We need to shake things up.

"Liara, Tali!" I call, sending a brief signal to pull a double-strike, something they almost never do together.

Tali starts with her drone, a reliably natural move for her. Irana moves to overload it only for Liara to throw a stasis field around her feet and take away her balance.

"How's this for the ones that don't belong on the battlefield?!" Liara sneers before bringing pressure into the stasis field. Then she makes the real move: she pulls the field back, throwing Irana off her feet entirely, and lets Tali manually set off her drone's explosive discharge, flinging Irana back into a tumble across the field.

Irana starts to get up faster than she should. She instantly regrets it when a grenade rolls up to her. She just barely has time to jump out of the way before it goes off. Then is immediately followed by an entire thermal clip's worth of incendiary shots and, finally, a concussive shot that throws her painfully into a tree.

Shepard is back up, clutching her gun, the wound she took earlier gone thanks to the medi-gel she had on-hand. As she starts over to us, I notice how she's panting from the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush. Guess I can see why so many people liken her to a krogan when she's in a real firefight.

"Go ahead and kill me if you want," Irana growls from the position she was thrown into, "It won't change anything. She'll still destroy you! You'll never be able to stop us—!"

I cut her off by firing a bullet into her shoulder. I just barely keep myself from smiling at the resulting cry of pain.

Shepard gives me a brief grateful smirk before holstering her rifle and stepping up to the downed spy. I never thought I'd see this, but her next move is to bury the heel of her boot into the wound I left behind. "Where's Kendrys hiding?!"

"If you think I'm telling you anything, forget it! Commander Shepard or not, I'm not going to be intimidated by some human who betrayed the people that gave her back her life."

Shepard just gives her a look. "Pot, kettle. Have you met?"

"Save it. You can't win this one, _street rat_."

Shepard instantly steps back and draws her pistol back out. "Call me 'street rat' _one more time_ …!"

"And what?" Irana continues to growl at her, bringing herself slightly upright as she does, "There's nothing you can do to change what's coming. And whether you find her or she catches you, you'll all—!"

The next second goes by in a flash:

As Irana is still talking, my gaze drifts to Shepard and I instantly notice something is wrong…

…I recognize the laser sight rising into position for a kill shot…

…before I can even realize I'm moving, I jump onto her…

…and a gunshot goes off, throwing me back as we both hit the ground.

Distantly, I'm aware of how the scene around us erupts into a panic. Irana was clearly expecting that shot and instantly sets off running, forcing some of the squad to race past me and Shepard after her. I hear three shots go off, I see people rushing past me, but all I feel is the pain coursing through me where the bullet struck. I try to turn to inspect it, but that sends a pressure into my right shoulder that makes it worse, forcing me to turn my gaze to the ground and bite back a sharp gasp of pain.

Suddenly, Sara is next to me, applying pressure to the wound. That makes the pain worse for a moment, but I still welcome it—it eases the bleeding and it's coming from her. "Are you alright?!"

Of course, the moment she asks, a surge of pain floods back into the wound, drawing out the beginnings of that gasp of pain I was holding back. "No!"

Before she can say or do anything more, the rest of the squad comes rushing back.

"Irana's gone," Jacob reports, "She got in a shuttle with the Shadows and they cleared out."

Shepard takes a moment to hit the ground in frustration before considering what to do. We have no way of catching up to her except the _Normandy_ and she'll be out of sight by the time we get back to the ship. But we also won't have any way of finding Kendrys if we lose her except going back to our original plan, which would never work now that she knows what we'll be doing. Shepard knows this, so she knows we're out of options. Finally, she sighs and turns on her COMM. "Joker, it's Shepard. We need extraction. …and get the med bay ready." With that said, she pulls my left arm over her shoulders and drags me to my feet, one hand still in place to put pressure on the wound.

To be fair, it's only my shoulder that's injured, I can still walk on my own. But I still cling to her every second until Dr. Chakwas gets to me. And not just because I'm injured.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15 – Shepard

I sit in my cabin, waiting restlessly for any word. The others decided to wait in the mess hall for the news, so they're right there by the med bay and they'll get there long before I do, but I couldn't think straight when I was with them. I couldn't sit right there when I knew it would cause me to watch through the viewing glass and constantly flash back to the moment I was thrown forward to the sound of a gunshot. Waiting here, so far away from him, isn't much better, but I couldn't be right with him either way and I couldn't very well wait in silence with the rest of the squad right next to me, so I made the call to come curl up on the edge of my bed and watch my feet unconsciously tap the floor as I worry.

I keep blaming myself, thinking this could've been avoided if I'd done something differently. And it could've. If I hadn't let Irana come along, we would never have been in the position she locked us in on Nevos. Sure, turning her away might've ended up badly, too, but…who am I kidding? Kendrys has been steering us at every turn. She's moving us like pieces in a game so she can draw us in for the kill. Every time we outwitted her, we fell into another trap in her elaborate scheme. Orion was never this bad about that, but he, as Ash put it, had a single-minded persistence that drove him through every contract, while Kendrys just wanted to revel in the suffering. She just gave us a really hard hit. The first of many, if her track record is anything to go by.

And now Garrus is hurt. Because of me.

 _"Shepard," EDI finally comes over the COMM,_ _"Dr. Chakwas is finished—"_

I don't give her the chance to say anything else before I jump to my feet and run for the elevator, letting my hand slamming against the button for deck 3 be the force that stops my dash into it. I spend the descent shuffling my feet by the wall and impatiently awaiting the signals of arrival. When they finally come, I race around the corner and over to the med bay before the doors even close, just barely reminding myself to readopt my military composure before I reach my destination.

Dr. Chakwas is waiting outside. "Don't worry, Commander, he'll survive. No sustained damage."

"It didn't hit anywhere vital?" I bring myself to ask, somehow managing to keep my voice steady.

"No nerves or bones, if that's what you're asking. I heard what happened. In my opinion, this was the best possible outcome either of you could've achieved in that situation. If he hadn't taken a shot to the shoulder, you'd have taken one to the head."

"How long's he gonna be in there?"

"Until tomorrow morning, I'd say. The medi-gel took care of most of the injury itself, so as long as he lets his arm rest through the night, it'll be back to normal before the week is out."

I look over at the door, still somewhat concerned. He's on the mend and all, but he was injured in the first place because he had to save me. I was careless and he was reckless and he was shot because of me and I've been worrying myself to death because of him and… To put it plainly, I'm torn between two _extreme_ emotional reactions, one of which I can't do with the rest of the squad in there with us and the other I can't do if he's in pain. "But he's OK, right?"

"At the moment, yes."

I instantly feel the previously discounted extreme rise up inside me. " _Good_." Before Chakwas can realize what that means, I step over to the door, open it, and walk through.

Garrus is in one of the medical beds, leaning back against the wall with his right arm in a sling and a bandage over his shoulder. Even though he seems to be listening to the others talking around him, he notices the door opening and turns to look my way. For a moment, he seems to brighten at the sight of me. Then he seems to notice something's not right.

"Shepard," Miranda notices me first, "We were just—"

I move past her and storm over to Garrus. "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

Everyone in the room instantly goes into shock.

Garrus, of course, realizes why I'd be mad and pulls himself out of it enough to give an answer: "I…I wasn't thinking, I just… _reacted_."

"You could've been killed! I told you not to do this again!"

"That stinger shot kept your shields down! What was I supposed to do?!"

"Uh…" Tali looks over at us, "…yeah, so…we're just going to…" She then looks between us for about five seconds before finally just stepping out in silence, the rest of the squad following close behind.

As soon as they're gone, I feel the rage die down and give way to the other extreme I was wrestling with. Slowly, the anger fades…

"Alright, look," Garrus says, "we—"

…and I find myself crying again.

Garrus instantly stops talking. "…Shepard?"

I simply look at him until my vision blurs. My thoughts are still ringing with that moment, my senses distantly echoing with the memory. Sadly, I step over to his side and kneel down there, laying my head down on his chest with my ear to his heartbeat. "…I didn't see it happen…I felt you push me out of the way, I heard the shot go off, I saw you go down…I…" …tasted the unbearably familiar scent of turian blood in the air, lost the ability to breathe when my heart realized what happened, went blind with the rage for two seconds and woke up to find a gun in my hand still ringing from the shot that tore through the sniper, couldn't drop everything and crawl over to him fast enough, got torn apart for what felt like hours but was really only a few seconds from worrying that he might have just given everything he had to save me…again. "…I thought I was going to lose you."

His left hand reaches around to hold me closer, the talons softly combing through my hair again. "…Sara…" Hearing his voice whisper my name calls a warmth into my heart even as my eyes seem to cloud even more. I don't move in response, taking comfort in the sound of his heart beating the way I know he does with mine. It makes me forget the memory of that gripping terror of the moment I smelled his blood and lost control at the thought of _This is when I lose him forever._ He understands that better than anyone. Which just makes him hold me closer almost sadly. Finally, he sighs, leaning over to lay his head over mine. "…I'm sorry."

But he has no reason to apologize. If it'd been the other way around, I'd have done the same thing he did without hesitation. The fault for my almost-breakdown isn't his. "…no…I'm sorry." He moves back to look at me. This is probably one of those moments when he has that _What are you talking about?!_ look in his eyes, but I don't bring myself to look. I just pull myself back from him, leaning against the bed. "What happened with Irana is my fault. I knew the Shadows were after us and I still let a complete stranger follow us…" I sigh, closing my eyes as I turn them to the floor, and don't even care when my light red hair falls over them. "…I screwed up. I need to fix it."

Garrus stays silent for a moment. Then he reaches his hand over and presses it to my face, pulling my hair back from it and bringing me to turn my eyes back to his again. " _We'll_ fix it. Together."

I take in the sight of his bright blue eyes. Even before I knew I loved him, I couldn't deny they were strangely beautiful. Enough to make me forget any pain I might be in for just a moment. And he's always made me forget the worst. "Always there for me."

"Of course. What would you do without me?"

I laugh, knowing full well what the answer is: "…I honestly still don't know." I keep my eyes on his, losing my scattered thoughts to the burning need to show him how much he means to me. My hand rests itself against his scars affectionately, a gesture he gladly leans into. After a moment, I use the contact to close what little distance remains between us and kiss him. When I slowly pull back, I stay as close as I can, leaning my head against his. For a moment, I let us remain in this position, all but pressed together, nothing but a single breath of air between us. At long last, I pull my legs up to his and lay back on the bed with him, careful not to lean on his right side, and nuzzle against him. "Never scare me like that again."

His left hand softly lowers itself through my hair to my arm as he considers my words. He stays uncomfortably quiet as he does, barely moving. Then he leans back, letting his foot reach over to mine. With a quiet sigh, he holds me tighter and leads me to lean in closer. "I won't. Promise."

I can't keep myself from smiling softly as I wrap my arms around him as well. "Good. And if you break that promise and get yourself killed, I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kick your sorry turian backside from one end of that bar to the other."

He actually laughs again, the sound of it drawing my joy back from the depths of my spirit. "I don't doubt it."

I let my smile brighten, just barely laughing along with him as—

Suddenly, Reaper code flashes behind my eyes, its cold, mechanical grasp tightening every synapse in my brain. I quickly pull back from Garrus, clutching my head as I wait for the sudden surge of pain to die down.

Garrus, of course, instantly starts up at my side, reaching for me. "Sara?" There's a distinct tone of absolute concern in his voice, one I've become increasingly familiar with every day we've been together.

But this time…this is different. I keep my eyes focused forward, letting my hand slowly fall away from its position holding the pain at bay. The pain's gone already. It usually subsides this fast, but this doesn't feel the same. When I feel Garrus' hand on my shoulder, I think I see why. So I reach up and press my hand against his, holding it in place. "…I'm alright." And I am. Because the Shadows and even the Reapers can't touch me here. Nothing can get to me that I can't face when Garrus is at my side. Even the attacks are dying down the more I'm with him. My system is fighting them off and I have the strength to because he set me free. Kendrys can argue otherwise all she wants, but he's the reason I'm alive today. This is the only place in the galaxy I'm safe because this is where I truly belong. On the _Normandy_ with the only person I've ever loved with all my heart. "I'm fine…" I lean back into him, still not letting him take his hand away from me. "…just don't let go of me."

He takes a moment before, plainly joyful, renewing his hold on me and leading me to lay down beside him, pressed as tight together as we can be in this moment. "Never."

I gladly stay here, not willing to let go or even move for anything. This is it. This is the peace we've been looking for. I could spend the rest of my life right here in the arms of the turian I love and never—

 _"Shepard," EDI speaks up, "Liara wishes to speak with you in the CIC."_

Right. Not quite there yet. I sigh as I force myself to pull away from Garrus' hold on me. "I'll be right there." Even as I get back on my feet, I give Garrus one last smile. "Don't go anywhere."

"Would that I could," he counters pointedly, leaning back on his left side to emphasize his injury.

I just give him a brief look. "I'll come back as soon as we're done." With that, I walk out, letting my hand keep hold of his as long as possible before we're out of reach. I can still feel his sliding out of my grip when I get on the elevator and send it to deck 2.

When I come out of the elevator and into the CIC, I find the squad already gathered there.

"Shepard," EDI says as I step in, "Liara has found useful information pertaining to Irana Zeranos."

That certainly piques my interest. I turn to Liara. "What do you have?"

Liara calls up her omni-tool, displaying what she found for us. "I ran a new search on the data we recovered from the Shadows' base on Omega. None of their operatives were expressly named, but the data was previously accessed by all three of Orion's lieutenants. I cross-referenced the codes with the ones Irana used to give EDI the signal that led us to the Shadows' base on Noveria. There was a match."

"So that's it, then," I sigh, "Irana really is one of the two left standing." _This isn't good._ I turn to Liara again. "I don't suppose you found the second one?" She shakes her head. "Of course not. Guess that means it's safe to say Kendrys has either killed them, taken them in, or shut them out."

"Then we either don't have to worry about it, will deal with it when we find her, or can handle it later," James points out.

I just shrug. "Fair enough, I suppose. Anything else I should know?"

"We facilitated a more specific search through earlier-acquired data," EDI answers, "Something…interesting came up."

"By 'interesting,' she means 'incriminating,'" Liara explains, "The Widow Irana was using and even the specialty 'stinger ammo' she started employing on Nevos were both designed by the Aephus police force requisitions officer…shortly before she killed him."

I can't deny that I'm the least bit shocked by this news. "You're sure it was her?"

"Positive. I did some more investigation into the knife that killed him. It's not just the same poison that was used on Garrus—holographic imaging confirms it's the same knife. And, as you know, Garrus identified Irana as the Shadow that poisoned him the night the Orpheus Protocol was enabled."

Yeah. He did. Just before the _Normandy_ extracted us and got him to the med bay, he told us how he recognized her movements as those of the Shadow that cornered him on Palaven on the anniversary of my death over London. At the time, I was thinking _One more reason to kill her. Next time I see her, she's taking a whole clip's worth of bullets again. And worse._ Now, I know that I'm seeing what Garrus feels towards Kendrys for hurting me. Guess we'll have to watch each other. Or switch targets and handle this the best way we know how.

"I also ran with this knowledge," Liara continues, "and discovered something equally interesting. Her records had been hacked three days before I accessed them. I pulled a few strings and restored system integrity. As it turns out, she was part of the turian military, but the mission that made her leave was quite different from what she led us to believe. She was the sole survivor of her squad, but the mission itself was a failure; when the hierarchy found out she sacrificed her entire unit without accomplishing the goal, they dishonorably discharged her. Rather than flee to her birth-world of Aephus, she joined the Shadows and, when Kendrys revived them after Omega, helped them establish contact with the weapons dealer."

"So she was always a backstabber," Jacob growls, "And that big spiel about her childhood—was it _all_ a lie?"

I look at Liara's omni-tool display, currently a picture of Irana. I consider the inquiry, wondering if I might be able to answer it myself. I think of what we know of her, separate the truth from the lies and leave what's left. Finally, I sigh, knowing full well what the real answer to Jacob's question is: "No. The best liars tell the truth."

Most of the others simply glance at Liara's display like I did until she brings herself to turn it off. We're all thinking the same thing: _We trusted her and she betrayed us. She has to pay._ And, for once in my life, I think justice and vengeance might end up being the same thing.

"Shepard? There is one more thing."

I look at the person who said so. "What is it?"

"We may have our next target," EDI reports, "I was able to track the shuttle Irana took through the relay network. It stopped moving on Aephus and no unregistered departures have been made from the surface since arrival. Unless the Shadows stowed away or previously booked their escape on the transit flights, they are likely still there."

"Trust me when I say the Shadows don't take public transport. They're there. We'd better get there before they clear out."

"We will move in immediately. We should arrive in less than an hour. Shall we mobilize?"

I find myself considering the question, casting a glance back at the elevator. If we can get to Aephus that fast, I really should be preparing. On the other hand… "…yeah, but I'll catch up," I answer, "I should go tell Garrus."

EDI nods. "Of course, Shepard."

I nod back before heading over to the elevator. Once I'm on deck 3, I head around to the med bay, briefly glancing at the mess area and noticing that Dr. Chakwas is there, which means Garrus is alone. Smiling at the thought, I open the door and step through, letting it close behind me.

Garrus is in the same place he was when I left, but he's fallen asleep since I did. The sling has been discarded, but he moves enough in his sleep that he could put unwanted pressure on his injured shoulder, so his right arm is strapped down just enough to discourage any excess motion that could aggravate the injury. His left hand is loose at his side and his head is turned to face it, openly displaying his scars.

I take a few seconds to commit the image to my memory, unable to resist letting a light smile creep through. After those few seconds are up, I quietly make my way over to his side and kneel down there, my right hand resting gently on his outstretched palm. When he doesn't respond, I lean over and kiss his scars, nuzzling against them afterwards. "I love you, Garrus," I whisper in his ear before ever so slowly pulling back, letting my cheek brush against his scars as I move over them.

He doesn't wake up, but he still reacts by smiling softly as he inches back, pulling his left hand away from me and letting it rest over his waist.

My own smile brightens in response, my eyes locked on him. The hand that was resting over his moves up to his fringe, letting the backs of my fingers slide across it the same way he strokes my hair. As the motion becomes unconscious, I look over at his slowly healing shoulder. Pretty soon, it'll join the scar in his side as proof of how much he loves me—so much that he'd be willing to die to protect me. My left hand reaches over and, as carefully as it's able, touches the bandage. I can feel that the wound is almost completely sealed, showing that Dr. Chakwas was right and he'll be back in action within the next day. That certainly makes me feel better. The thought of going through the rest of this mission without having him right behind me is unacceptable.

It's then I remember why I came in here. I have to find some way to tell him that I'm heading out on a mission while he's stuck in here. I look at him again, considering my options. …I don't even have the heart to wake him up. Sighing silently, I pull my hands back for a moment before pressing my left hand to his scars. "Don't worry. I'll be back as soon as I can." Then I get back on my feet and walk out, casting one last look back at the love of my life before leaving the med bay.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16 – Garrus

I guess I should've expected Shepard's reaction to my "thoughtless chivalry," but it always strikes me to see the hero of the galaxy reduced to tears, especially when they're for my sake. At least I can't deny that she loves me as much as I love her. Certainly not when she ends up nestled against me like this, begging me not to give her another opportunity to fear losing me like I lost her. I don't wanna make a promise I know I probably won't be able to keep, but I want even less to put her through something that would hurt her so badly. So I do the only thing I can and tell her I won't let this happen again. Silently hoping I don't have to test it.

For a moment, I get to enjoy the feeling of holding her close, seeing her smile, even listening to her laugh just a little for me. But, as usual, it's just for a moment. And this time, what cuts us off isn't the crew calling for their captain but the Reaper's signal making its way into her brain, causing her nerves to seize up and her eyes to flash the blue color of synthetic merging. She reacts to the surge of pain that accompanies it the same as she typically does, flinching back and pressing her hand to her head uncomfortably.

I move on instinct, just barely keeping myself from trying to use my right arm and setting myself back in recovery time. "Sara?" I reach for her as she slowly lowers her hand, not looking away from the wall ahead of us. I finally place my hand on her shoulder, trying to ask her if she needs me and let her know I'm here anyway at the same time.

She presses her hand against mine. "…I'm alright." Under any other circumstances, I might question whether that's true or not. But the look in her eyes, the way the emerald at the center gleams, shows she's actually happy. "I'm fine…" As if ignoring that the attack ever happened, she leans back against me, keeping a tight hold on my hand to make sure… "…just don't let go of me."

She's not asking for comfort this time. The attack's not leaving some kind of emotional aftershock. She's acting like…like all she needs is me. Not as an anchor like the past two months have had me, but as an actual need.

That's my Sara Shepard talking. She's back.

The most joy I've felt since the moment on Omega that I knew she was really alive takes over, more than I thought I could ever feel, and I hold her tight again, leading her to press herself as close to me as our current position will let her get. "Never."

She stays close, more calm and happy than I've seen her in weeks. This is perfect, so much so that I wish we never had to—

 _"Shepard," EDI suddenly cuts in, "Liara wishes to speak with you in the CIC."_

—leave.

Shepard sighs as she reluctantly pulls away from me. "I'll be right there." But she still gives me one last smile before leaving the room, holding to my hand as long as she can even as she walks out.

That smile, too, the look in her eyes as she gave it…I haven't seen that since London. I can take that as confirmation. Her big emotional struggle is over. The Crucible's effect on her finally gave way. Once the attacks calm down like EDI said they would and the Shadows are dealt with for good, we can really have our lives together like we planned. This is exactly what I dreamed of when she was…gone. My _kalwen_ , unbroken, ready to take our love to the next level if need be. I've finally gotten her back and I don't have to be worried she'll break down again.

I just have to take hold of her and never let go. That thought echoes through my mind for the next five minutes, drowning out my senses so that I don't even notice when the weight of the past few days takes hold of my no longer restless mind and I start falling asleep.

 _She's still on my mind even as it fades. Like she's still right beside me. I can almost feel her touch, soft and calming. In the moments before dreams take hold, I could swear I feel her kissing my scars again and hear her voice whispering "I love you, Garrus." It's enough to make my heart warm up, sending a flood of light through me just as the dreams begin._

 _And when it clears, I'm back on deck 1, outside her door, trying to talk myself into opening it. Just ten minutes ago, she sent the signal through the ship—_ to what little crew remains _—that our course was locked for the Omega-4 relay. This could be my last chance. I've been telling myself what I'd do when this day came ever since we first started talking about turning our friendship into something more, and I still went through with it up until this point, but now that this door is all that stands between me and her actually taking that big step…_

 _The nerves are more than I thought they were. It's always been that I was worried I might screw this up somehow, but there's more to it. Somewhere, deep down, I believe something that dictates this'll never work:_ I'm not good enough for her. _This is_ Commander Shepard _, after all—hero of the Citadel, star Spectre, the most beautiful human I've ever seen (not that I ever thought of many humans as actually attractive before, but still). Why would she be interested in a turian sniper with an attitude problem who's most well known as a vigilante that got ten people who trusted him killed?_

 _But then I remember something she told me. "I don't want something 'closer to home.' I want you." I think of the look in her eyes as she smiled to me after saying so. I remember how just yesterday I told her how much I wanted this and how she said "I want that, too, Garrus."—almost pleadingly, like she_ needed _it. She wants this as much as I do. And given how this could very well be the last night we're alive together, I have no reason to let my worry for what might happen get in the way of going through with it._

 _Of course, even more than that, I remember something else. I remember the day I've been trying to forget for the past two years. The day grief, disillusionment, and emotions both undeclared and unrequited (at least I thought so at the time) took hold all together like a crushing weight I couldn't live with. The day the Alliance confirmed the_ Normandy SR-1 _destroyed and told us all the three words I absolutely never wanted to hear: "Shepard is dead." That news broke me down. Losing her like that…_

 _She came back. And I'm not letting anything stop me from showing her what she means to me this time._

 _So I open the door and walk in. When I hear the shower running and shortly after turning off, I consent to wait here for her. By the time she comes out, the nerves have already crept their way back in, but it's too late to turn back now. I make my move as best I know how (which is clearly not that well), but her response is what finally leads us into it. Once she does, I can't bear to keep my fears inside anymore, and I can't stop myself from pouring my heart out to her. I've already told her how much I feel like I'm alone, like she's the only real friend I have, but only now do I add to it by telling her how much I feel like everything I've done has ended in failure. How I'd give anything to make sure this one thing actually goes right._

 _With every word, the playful spark in her eyes dims to a saddened gleam, eagerness supplanted by pure sympathy._ She never could just sit back knowing someone was in pain. Especially not a friend. _She finally reaches up to gently touch my scars, the contact enough to silence my worries. The look in her eyes and the way she touches me make me remember the hours after I got hit by that gunship on Omega, hearing her voice even when I was unconscious telling me how she'd do whatever it took to get me through it because she couldn't lose me. I always wondered if she'd really said any of it or if I just dreamed it. Now is the time I realize it wasn't a dream._

 _When her hand falls away from me, I move closer to her, my hand slowly moving up her arm as she leans into it. I'm still not sure how to handle this. So when my hand finds its way to her shoulder, she smiles, uses her own hand to guide it up to her face, and then makes a move herself: she leans in even closer and kisses me for the first time. For about two seconds, I'm paralyzed, not sure how to respond. Then I find myself closing my eyes and giving in to it, copying her actions as best I can._

 _In all the time since we started talking about this, in all the time I've been wondering what would happen when this moment finally came, I never dreamed it would be so…is there even a word for this? It's kind of hard to think with her pressed against me, so close I can feel her heartbeat slowly rising, no distance between us like we've been keeping for so long._ Two years too long. _Before I know it, some instinct I didn't know I had takes over and I wrap my arms around her to pull her even closer, the hand that was against her face moving to slide my fingers into her hair. The way I end up grasping it tightly seems like it should be at least somewhat painful, but she doesn't seem to mind._

 _Five minutes later, we've somehow ended up in the same position on top of the bed, no reservations to be had. And even if we did, why would we let them get in the way now? We could very well be dead by tomorrow morning. The more we cling to each other, slowly getting lost in this embrace, the more I realize that it's not any hidden instinct guiding my actions. It's passion. All the feelings I've buried and even denied since the day we met have come free and taken over. So I can't stop myself when one of my hands slowly comes between us to…uh…_

 _I pull away just enough to look down. "…wait…how do you…?"_

 _She looks down with me and sighs. "I take it turians don't use buttons?" She pushes my hand aside and undoes them herself._

 _"Not really, no."_

 _She smirks at me. "Am I going to have to walk you through this, Vakarian?"_

 _I sigh, leaning closer to her again. "I really wish I could say 'no.'"_

 _Her smirk shifts into a smile as she starts guiding my hands into position. "Don't worry. I don't mind." Then she moves back in to return us to our previous places as she does so. Somehow, though, when her hands find their way back to me, they know exactly where to go. Somehow, she knows exactly what I need her to do._

 _Somehow, she always does._

 _I don't bother hiding my devastation when EDI calls us to say our two hours are up. But I also don't bother hiding how I watch Shepard get ready for what's apparently the biggest mission we've been on so far. She even does something I've never seen her do and ties her light red hair back. I wind up committing the image to memory. I might never see it again…and she's strangely beautiful as she does._

 _The approach itself seems to go well, if a bit stressfully. Joker gets us through the debris field in one piece and Shepard, Legion, and Grunt manage to take out the Oculus in the cargo bay without any trouble. We even get to take out the Collector ship that killed the first_ Normandy _…before we crash-land on their base. Good news is, the Collectors don't know where we are and the ship can get fixed before we have to clear out (at least we're hoping so…). So we get ready to move and establish our plan of action. The only real course of action available is sending someone through the vents to hack the doors barring our way to the central chamber while the rest of us break into two teams to head through the halls leading that way. Shepard, obviously, will take the first team, but Miranda's suggestion to take command of the second isn't met well._

 _Shepard looks between us, considering who should be the second team leader…and her eyes fall on me. "Garrus, you're in charge of the second team."_

 _Somewhere inside me, an internal organ seizes up at the memory of what happened last time I led a squad. But I barely notice. I can see the faith in her eyes, showing undeniably that she believes in me. She trusts me absolutely if she's willing to entrust the lives of her team to my hands. I_ won't _let her down. So, no words to give her, I nod in acknowledgment of my task. I don't listen to Miranda when she makes some comment about the decision ("Well, at least he knows what he's doing…"). I just keep my eyes on Shepard. When no one's looking, she smiles at me. A silent conveyance of "You can do this. For me."_

… _I can. And I will._

 _When we move out, I can see her heading into the first entrance with her half of the squad as I lead the others to the second, Tali passing between us as she finds her way to the vent. After we're fully separated, infiltrating the base itself, and out of sight of each other, Shepard's voice comes over my COMM looking for confirmation that we're in position. I give it. And I don't turn my COMM back off after I do. As we move through the halls to the door we'll meet her on the other side of, I can hear her guiding her half of the team through it, fighting off the Collectors, helping Tali make it through the vents—hearing it gives me a reason to fight harder. So much harder that, after Tali gets us through the door, I'm the one holding the line as she gets Shepard through. And the one who sees her in danger and calls down the suppressing fire needed to hold off the Collectors coming at us until Tali can close the door back._

 _When we've got the crew out and built up the plan to get through the next hall, I take the lead of the diversion team without question. Everything goes well when the team splits into three different directions—Jacob leading the crew back to the ship, Jack helping Shepard through the hall loaded with Seeker Swarms, and me at the front of the fire team meant to draw the Collectors' attention away from the seemingly-fearless Commander. Two minutes later, though, I've started to panic again._

 _When we breach the hall and take cover, ready to get moving and clear of any threats for now, I turn my COMM back on. "Garrus here. Second team is in position and waiting for your orders, Shepard."_

 _My only response is static._

 _"Shepard? Shepard!" Nothing. I just barely catch something about the swarms before the signal cuts out. I put the pieces together: the swarms are causing interference. We have no contact._ If something happens this time, I won't know. _I look back at the hall before us, distantly seeing shadows moving, and know the Collectors are getting ready for us. If we don't head in now, they might figure out where Shepard is. That's what makes me turn to the others behind me and give the order. "Let's go." So we jump headlong into the chaos, and I use the fight as a distraction from my growing concern. I know she can handle herself—if anyone in the entire galaxy can, it's her—but that doesn't stop me from subconsciously praying to the spirits that she doesn't get hurt._

 _When we finally get to the door, the Collectors have started piling up behind us, determined to make sure we don't get through. That's when I start getting desperate and try my COMM again. "SHEPARD! Do you copy?! Come on, Shepard, where are you?!"_

"I copy," her voice finally comes back through, unknowingly easing one of my deeper reasons to be panicking, "What's your position?"

 _"We're pinned down at the door and taking heavy fire!" I report even as I duck out of cover long enough to shoot back for a few seconds. Under the furious noise of warfare raging around us, I hear her call back to hold on, that she's coming for us. Five seconds later, the doors open. I rush through with the others, turning back once we're on the other side to lay down as much fire as my gun can still give. Finally, the doors start closing back._

 _In the split second just before they seal, one last Collector bullet flies through and hits me. Just the force of it knocks me off-balance, causing me to stumble against the door with my hand against my gut where I took the shot._

 _Shepard instantly notices and rushes up to me._

 _Just the sight of her gives me my strength back. I shake it off and turn to her, signaling that I'm alright._

 _She noticeably sighs with relief, placing her hand on my shoulder before heading back over to the others to contact EDI again._

 _What comes next is unsettling, to say the least. Jacob managed to get the crew back with no casualties and we're almost to the chamber where we can set the self-destruct for the base, but the Collectors have caught up to us. Most of us are going to have to wait here and guard the door while Shepard takes Mordin and Miranda and sets the charge herself._

 _I watch her go before getting ready to hold the line again._ I haven't been at her side for any of this and I'm supposed to be watching her back. _It's only after the thought strikes me that the implications really hit me. I have been watching her back—by watching everyone else's. She can handle herself, I know that, so why am I so worried about her?_ …oh…wow. I never realized…do I actually—? _Only when I hear the Collectors getting closer do I remind myself what's at stake and shake it off. Then I ready my weapon, take cover with the rest of the squad, and prepare for the worst._

 _The siege is long and hard. Their numbers seem to be unlimited. At least, this time, Shepard's COMM stays active. Hearing her telling off the Illusive Man actually brings me to smile to myself as I'm sniping down the Collector troopers. Just like my Shepard. At long last, we have the window we need to clear out and head back to the ship. We take it and wait for Shepard there. Once she's onboard, Joker gives us all the speed we have and we clear out. As we do, the squad, from the bridge, can see it as the explosion chases us out. After we've cleared it, there's an overwhelming sense of triumphant relief flooding between us all._

 _The base is gone. The_ Normandy _is back out of the galactic core. The crew is safe and we all made it out alive._

 _It's over._

 _"Remind me never to agree to a suicide mission again," Jack sighs as we step over to the CIC._

 _"Mission accomplished," Mordin points out, almost gratifyingly, "No casualties. Good work, best possible outcome. …should probably rest now."_

 _"Are you kidding?" Joker smirks, "Do you see what we just pulled off? We should be celebrating!"_

 _"Well," I shrug, gesturing to the galaxy map, "we are pretty close to Omega. We could always dock there, have a few drinks, stir up a little trouble…" I then turn and see Shepard smirking at me. "…what?"_

 _The smirk brightens as she starts to make her way over to me. "Vakarian, you and I have very different ideas about what constitutes a proper celebration." Before I even realize what she means, she's come up to me…and, her hands on either side of my face, pulled me in to kiss me. I gladly return it, one hand around her waist as the other slides into her hair and lets it fall free, not even caring that pretty much the entire crew is watching._

 _We had tried to keep our attempt at a relationship a secret from the crew for a couple weeks there, but it's a small ship and word travels fast regardless. I don't know if EDI told someone or if someone overheard us in the battery or if some of our more observant crewmates had noticed how much differently we were acting around each other, but rumors started circulating. Much as they tried to keep it quiet, Shepard and I had both heard the whispers between crewmen about our "fraternization." And Mordin had apparently talked to both of us about the medical implications of a human-turian relationship so he must have heard about us from somewhere. Since we've already taken care of everything else, we've stopped caring about how everyone else is going to respond and started what I get the feeling we're going to be doing a lot of now._

 _When she pulls back, smiling so bright her eyes light up, I notice how everyone reacted. Some of the crewmen, especially Daniels and Donnelly, are reacting like this is some intimate scene from a romance vid (which I guess it might as well be). Joker is smirking from the end of the bridge and muttering something I think is "Well, it's about time." Jack and Grunt are both looking away in something along the lines of disgust (which I should've expected from them), but Thane and Samara are both tossing silent, knowing (dare I say approving?) smiles._

 _Legion, however, is the one we take an interest in. It stands there, looking at us in apparent curiosity. "…we…do not understand."_

 _Tali just gives off something like a small laugh. "I'll explain later, Legion."_

 _Shepard just barely keeps herself from laughing at this before turning back to me and leaning her head against mine._

 _I gladly press my hand against her to keep her close. She just gave me what I'm fairly convinced was the best night of my life. Now I know for certain._

 _I think I might love her._

That last thought still echoes in my mind as I open my eyes. Until it's supplanted by the reminder _I do love her. More than anything._ When my vision clears and I see I'm in the med bay, I take a second to wonder what happened. Then I notice something's—oh…right. Dr. Chakwas said my shoulder would be back to normal within 24 hours thanks to the medi-gel, but she said that would only work if I didn't move it too much and let it rest; so, since I move in my sleep, she had to strap it down. I groan to myself. _I need to stop putting myself in situations where I could get shot in the first place._

"Are you feeling alright?" Dr. Chakwas asks as she steps over and starts checking the wound.

"Better, I guess."

"…hmm…well, I should hope so. It looks like most of the damage is gone."

I don't bother holding back the sigh of relief that comes when Chakwas takes off the bandage and lets me out of the medical bed. I still press my left hand to my shoulder as I get up, but when no jolt of pain comes in response, I figure I must be back to normal already. "Glad that's over." I turn back to Dr. Chakwas as she sets the medical equipment aside. "Where's Shepard?"

She stops moving and turns to look at me, her expression something similar to apparent confusion. Or slight concern. "Didn't she tell you?"

Those words bring a tight feeling to my stomach, a lighter variant of the way my whole body clenched up at the thought of something very, very bad happening to my _kalwen_. "…tell me what?"

Before she can answer, Joker comes over the intercom. _"Dr. Chakwas? The squad's coming back. …they said to get the med bay ready."_


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17 – Shepard

 _"The shuttle landed by that transit station, Shepard," EDI reports into my COMM, "It appears to be inactive."_

I look around the wall I'm hiding behind. The station in question is about 40 meters ahead, dark and silent. All in all, it does seem like a place at least one squad of assassins could hide out in. But it also seems exposed and unguarded. Not the kind of place someone as good as Irana would choose even as a waypoint, certainly not when she was going to stick around it this long. "Alright, everyone move in, but keep your guard up. Irana must've known we'd be able to track her movements. She would've warned the Shadows, but things have been quiet so far. …I've got a bad feeling about this." My instincts are telling me so. Just that much should be enough to convince me to come up with a new strategy, but we don't have that many options. So I pull my gun out and start heading forward as the others do the same.

We're all headed to different entry points, making sure we close in on the Shadows inside and watch one another's backs. There are only 12 of us this time and there could be dozens of Shadows, so we really should be moving more carefully. Which is why I move in through a window and stay in the true shadows as I push ahead.

No sign of resistance in the first room. That can't be a good sign. The Shadows would have every entry point covered. These are trained assassins, not some rookie mercenaries. _Lure your victim in close with minimum resistance, then snap the trap shut and move in for the kill. They're definitely expecting us._ "Tell me someone found something," I say into my COMM as quiet as I can (if they're here and just waiting to ambush, no sense in letting them hear me).

 _"It seems to be clear, but this doesn't feel right," Tali answers._

 _"I don't like this," Grunt concurs, "No worthy opponent hides unless they are lying in wait."_

"My thoughts exactly, Grunt," I add, "Only way through this is to beat them at their own game. Don't let them see you until we're certain it's actually clear. If you have to make a move, do it quick and quiet." I almost start moving again. Then something occurs to me. "…and EDI? If you get the slightest suspicion they could be hacking our communications somehow, lock us in radio silence until we're out of the building."

 _"Understood," EDI agrees._

Once that's taken care of, I start moving forward, keeping to the shadows as much as I can. When I come to the end of this wall, I find myself forced to move through the open to get to the next cover. I do a quick sweep of the room, make sure there's no security active that could give me away. Then I dart forward, rolling behind the desk now keeping me covered. Still nothing. If there were any Shadows actually in this room, they would've reacted somehow. It must be clear.

I stick to the shadows as I head for the door, heading out of the room and into the hall. If Irana really is still here, she'll be in the control room at the center of the station. Should the plan go as expected, we'll meet up there, take her out, extract any data she may have on Kendrys' location, and fight our way out as needed. _Not that anything's ever gone as planned in the past…_

Suddenly, as I head into the next room on my path, I hear someone coming this way. I quickly duck down behind a post and peer around to see. There's a Shadow approaching. _Moving pretty slow. Guess they don't know we're here yet. Maybe this won't be as bad as I thought. Not that it can't still end up bad._

The Shadow is getting too close to my cover. If they come any closer, they'll see me for sure no matter what I do. I have to take them out without giving myself away. But firing my gun now will definitely be heard and my only path to get close enough to use my omni-blade is outright charging at them, which is obviously not an option if I'm trying to stay concealed.

For a split second, I almost reach for my COMM to call for a cover attack. Then I remember why that plan won't work: the established strategy we have requires Garrus to be about 50 meters behind me with his sniper rifle silenced. He's not here at all. I didn't even realize I was relying on him so much. It's not that it's a surprise, it's just…well, it makes this situation even more complicated. I need a new plan.

Then my gaze drifts across the way. On the other side of the hall from me is a pile of shipping crates. I have exactly three seconds before I'm spotted, so I don't have time to debate whether this is an acceptable idea or not. I simply pull out my pistol (quietest weapon I have…), load a concussive shot, and fire over at them. The resulting clatter reliably draws the Shadow's attention, forcing them to turn and inspect it. That's when I jump out behind them, wrap my left arm tight around them so they can't audibly react, and dig my omni-blade into their chest. Once they stop squirming, I drag the body back behind the shipping crates where no one can see it.

But then I hear more coming. Sounds like a whole patrol group, probably three or more. Either the Shadows are being more cautious than I anticipated or one of my squad-mates has been spotted and said assassins are investigating. There's no way I can avoid this one. I have to get out of sight.

As fast as I can without breaking my cover, I climb up the pile of shipping crates and jump up to the walkways overhead, pinning myself to the wall. They're still coming this way, though. And once they cross the room and double back to the center of the building they'll either see me or find the body I left behind. If they find the body, they'll know for certain that their security has been breached. If they see me, the firefights start instantly. Better to have them on-guard and nervous than shooting anything that moves.

I look around, searching for a way to clear the area entirely. When I look up, I see a vent shaft. _Works for me._ I reach up and grab hold of the cover, prying it off as quickly as I can without causing a racket. Once it's open, I climb up into it and start crawling through. From inside the vent, I can hear the Shadows in the halls. As I move closer, I hear them talking…

"…Falcon's sure going to a lot of trouble wearing them down."

"The more it works, the easier they'll be to kill."

"True enough. I guess I have to admit she knows what she's doing."

"That she does. She even knew exactly when they'd turn up on Nevos and Noveria."

"Well, Zeranos probably helped with that one."

"Yeah, but she had the traps laid even before the infiltration was successful. And if her contingencies for them discovering it work out, they'll be here any minute."

Great. This _is_ a trap. _Should've gone with your gut, Shepard. Just pulled out the second you knew something was wrong._ Of course, where would that have gotten us? The Shadows would still be hunting us and we'd be no closer to finding Kendrys.

Not that we're likely to find anything here that'll help since she knew we were coming.

Then I hear the Shadows talking again. When I hear it has something to do with the shipping crates I hid the dead Shadow behind, I start moving again. I crawl through the vents again, hope I'm not making any unwanted noise as I do, and head down the path I was supposed to be taking through the halls. It's not long before I come to a fork in my path. The vent not only splits into three different directions ahead of me but also goes up to the second level. _Well, great. Now what?_ I start to turn on my COMM to tell EDI what happened, but something stops me.

I hear something. Closing my eyes, I focus on the sounds around me. My life on Earth sharpened my senses. My training in the Alliance made use of that. Years of gunshots have a way of dulling your hearing, but Cerberus' intervention made sure that wasn't a problem. And now, thanks to Kendrys, all my senses have been finely tuned. So I can hear it when her voice rings through the vent shaft from the distance. Then I hear a voice that I've become familiar with over the last few days answer it. Irana. To the left. So, without giving it a second thought or even considering calling the others to warn them, I start moving that way.

It doesn't take long to get close. I hear Irana summing up what happened on Nevos as I move in. Then, when I come to another grate, I can see her. She's in the control room after all, talking to Kendrys over a videophone. Fury boils through me before I even realize it for several reasons: I can't track Kendrys like this, hearing her voice has a way of getting to me, and seeing Irana knowing what I do now gives me the overwhelming urge to shoot her, strangle her, and stab her all at once. _Great, now I'm thinking like she does. This isn't going to end well._

"…but at least your contingency for it worked," Irana is saying as she paces the room, "The sniper moved in right on time, gave me a chance to get away. Shepard survived the shot, though. Her boyfriend took it for her. Looks like he survived it, too."

 _"Well, then," Kendrys groans, "It's a triple disappointment." She sighs. "Did you at least make sure—?"_

"I didn't block the shuttle from their sensors. The AI's no doubt tracked us to Aephus by now, which means they'll be here any minute."

 _"Good. Be sure they walk away with a few pieces missing."_

"Look, don't get me wrong when I say this—I like this plan and I'm happy to be a part of it—but why let them walk away at all?"

 _Kendrys visibly tenses. That sinister gleam in her honey-like eyes seems dark and dangerous as she glowers viciously at the monitor before her. "I have a few questions for that. Question #1: …did you see Killian's body on Omega after our base there was decimated by the_ Normandy _'s crew?"_

"…no. I was on a job. By the time, I got back, you'd already taken over and cleared the mine."

 _"Well,_ I did _. In the hour of his death, they overloaded his cells from all the electrical impulses of breaking his barrier. Then they cracked his bones from an eight-story drop into those caverns. Then he was burned and beaten and shot and stabbed. And in his last moments, he drowned in his own blood from an arrow through his lung. I am a_ master _of death and pain, I know what that's like. It's not a nice way to go."_

"Alright. Fine. They hurt him, it hurt you, you wanna hurt them back. I get that. But—"

 _"Question #2…" Her brutal glare turns slowly to a smirk I can only describe as sadistic. "…how fast do you usually end your victims?"_

"Whatever the contract says."

 _She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Turians. So by-the-book."—_ Oh, I can argue that one. _—"You never savor the kill. You call yourself a Shadow? No, you're an assassin. When you have not just killed them, but broken them…carved their bones and reveled in the screams…torn their flesh and licked the blood off your hands…then you're a Black Shadow." She sighs, leaning back in her seat. "I've heard quite a few expressions across all the species in the galaxy and the one thing that humans and turians agree most widely about is this: it's the slow knife…the one that takes its time…then quietly slips between the bones…that cuts deepest."_

Irana simply looks at her quizzically. "You seem to enjoy this a bit too much."

 _Kendrys simply laughs. "Killian said the same thing. And he was probably right. But it doesn't change anything. His last wish was to kill them all and the great Commander Shepard stole his greatest ambition before he could. She needs to pay for that and they all need to pay with her. But, unlike Killian, I don't just want to kill them. I want to break them. And there are three tiers to that process."_

Irana nods briefly. "Psychological, physical, emotional."

 _"So our less committed operatives end their service on a high note wearing down our targets physically, which makes them more and more desperate to end this and wears them down psychologically. Then we let them close and I start playing my hand for real. One by one, they'll fall to us and all the others will break in response. And when it's just Shepard and her boy toy left, we_ really _hurt them…and make them watch each other fall apart."_

Irana groans, pressing a hand to her head. "I must be going crazy. You're making this sound appealing."

 _Kendrys smirks, shaking her head. "What's wrong with crazy?"_

"Nothing. But it's your thing."

 _"Ha! Fair enough."_

Before this can carry on any further (thankfully), the door opens and one of the Shadows comes in. "They're here."

 _Kendrys gives Irana a "What'd I tell you?" look._

Irana just turns to the Shadow. "Call everyone in. We're fighting them off."

 _As the Shadow moves to carry out the order, Kendrys starts to get up. "I should leave you to it then."_

"Believe me. If they get out of here alive, they'll wish they hadn't."

 _"That's what I like to hear." Then she hangs up._

So that's when I make my move. Irana is alone in the control room and on the move to her gun. I can take her down if I head in now, so I do. I kick the vent cover off and drop into the room behind the turian assassin, drawing my gun as I do.

Irana doesn't turn to face me, but I almost think I still see the smirk she's obviously giving. "Found me, did you, Shepard?"

"You wanted me to, didn't you?" I point out.

"Heard all that, huh?" She sighs, shaking her head as she turns to face me, not even bothering to reach for her gun. "Of course, from what I heard on your ship, you already knew enough about how she works to put those pieces together."

"Her plan's not going to work."

"It doesn't have to. You'll be dead either way. How fast you go is just her preference."

"You're pretty cocky for someone who's not leaving this room alive."

"Would you believe I've actually heard that same line about a dozen times before? Half of them were cops. Guess who actually did leave the room alive?"

"None of them were me."

"Heard that one even more," Irana sneers, "Of course, never from the great Commander Shepard, hero of the galaxy…lover to a turian with an aching for revenge. I take it he's somewhere behind you with a bullet for me right now?"

"It's just you and me this time," I retort with my gun at the ready, "Try anything and there'll be a shortcut between your heart and its oxygen supply."

"Still trying to pull the intimidating act despite your oh, so heroic reputation? Forget it." She then brings out a vicious smirk eerily similar to Kendrys' own. "Why should I be afraid of a Husk?"

Those words take a few seconds too long to really register. When they do, they almost paralyze me. "…what are you talking about?"

"You still don't know? How many times have you had those nerve attacks? Kendrys told me about them. The one time you actually suffered in all her procedures and she wasn't the one causing the pain—it intrigued her. Why do you think she finally initiated that test on your nervous system? 'No abnormal results,' so the problem wasn't internal. So it must have been external. But there was only one explanation that would account for that. My fellow lieutenant, the asari that put you back, died doing what no other asari had ever done before: connecting to an organic Reaper soldier. No other asari had ever transferred an entire consciousness before either. And you know what she was saying when she went insane just before she died? She said 'her mind was in all of them…I could feel them all.'"

She could "feel them." …she could feel all the Reapers. I knew my consciousness was evenly distributed between them all, giving me total control. But if they weren't just all responding to my signals, if they were all _carrying pieces_ of my mind…then the transfer wouldn't be enough to break the network my thoughts had made. _…no…_

"That's right. She didn't move the whole consciousness. Just the part of it that was self-aware, at the center of it all, drawn to that mind-link and the organic form it recognized as its previous host like a needle to a magnet. You're not your human self again. You're just a new command center."

I make the mistake of letting this news get to me. When she sees my aim wavering, she whips around, kicking me in the arm so that I drop to the floor and, from a reflex in response to the hit, release my hold on the gun in my hand. I only have enough time to shake off the hit before she has her gun at the ready.

"I wonder what would happen if I killed your body now," she smirks inquisitively as she cocks the weapon, "Do you think you'd just get thrown back into the Reapers like none of this ever happened? Or would you actually cross over this time? Oh, but if you crossed over, would you take your mind with you and revert the Reapers to their original programming?"

My left hand is covered in this position. She can't see it if I turn on my omni-tool. I might not be able to make all the uses of it Garrus and Tali get, but they did teach me one trick they thought would be a life-saver. Clearly, it will be.

"Then again, you probably completely deleted the old directives leading their actions, so they'd just end up floating around in dark space with nothing to do, wouldn't they? Hmm…well, now I'm curious. What do you think?"

I have my shot. I take it. I send the command that overloads the nearest technical device—in this case, the videophone she was talking to Kendrys through—and sends an electric discharge straight at her. As she staggers back, I grab back the gun I dropped and ready to fire. "I think you need to learn when to stop talking and _shoot_!" So _I_ don't hesitate to pull the trigger.

But she's faster than she looks. She ducks out of the way, rolling around to grab my wrist and pull it back. "Believe me, _I will_."

I quickly kick her back before she can twist my arm and inflict actual damage. Clearly, we can't do this fight in these close quarters. I have to get her into the open. No sooner has the idea struck me, either, than I hear a real fight break out in the transport terminal outside the control room. The Shadows really did find the rest of the squad. Sounds like they're tearing up the place.

Irana starts to pull her gun and take aim again. I move first, rushing over with my omni-blade. We end up in a deadlock similar to what she and Garrus got in on Nevos. Like Garrus did, I fight against it to direct the outcome, turning it so that she's leaning slightly towards my right. Then I throw my left leg against her, pushing her out of the way. By the time she gets back on her feet, she's right in front of the windows between the control room and the transport terminal. Perfect. I hold my gun up and fire. The concussive shot throws her back through the window with a crash, causing her to land harshly on the floor outside. I then make my way out to the terminal, jumping down whole flights of stairs to get there sooner.

The second I come into range of the gunshots, one of the Shadows tries to take one at me. I quickly dive out of the way, tumbling behind a railing before readying my assault rifle for a full-on firefight. As I do, I survey the area. There's a distinct lack of reasonable cover and a large amount of combatants (including all my friends but Garrus) but an expansive battlefield with plenty of maneuverability. Gives _me_ an advantage, at least, if I can remember how to really use it. But the odds of this ending well, even if it does end in our favor, aren't very high. Looks like I better get in as fast as I can. So I jump out into the fray and race over to our side of the field, taking out as many Shadows as I can along the way.

"Shepard!" Ashley remarks I rush up to her, "Watch your back, I think they figured out we're here."

"Noted," I toss back, "Don't suppose any of you got a shot in at Irana when I dropped her in?"

"I managed to get her in the arm, slow her down, but the other Shadows kept her covered long enough for me to lose sight of her. She's probably gonna come back hard—"

"Duck!" Jack calls. Once Ash and I follow through, she sends out a shockwave that launches back nine of the Shadows and throws three more off balance. Wrex and James then take advantage of this, removing at least four of the assassins from the equation.

"We can hold our ground from here, but not for long," I tell the others as I move to the nearest remotely useful cover and get behind it to start taking out the next few Shadows to come at us, "We need to either make this quick or cut our losses and pull back. They knew we were coming, so we aren't likely to find anything helpful here anyway."

"Why would we pull back?!" Grunt instantly demands, "I say we take out as many as we possibly can right now!"

"Well, then, have at it."

"With pleasure!" With that, he charges in ferociously.

"Hey!" Wrex growls before following suit.

"Remind me never to pick a fight with either of those two," James comments.

"Something tells me you'll remember on your own," Miranda points out.

I smirk at the banter before moving to open fire. With all of us going at it, we still stand a chance. I constantly make use of an age-old strategy: pick one target, shoot it until it's dead, move on to the next. The others seem to be doing much the same thing and, with Wrex and Grunt both going full-krogan on the opposition, the Shadows are having plenty of trouble holding their own.

"Ha!" Jacob smirks, "Garrus doesn't know what he's missing."

That's what throws off my aim and forces me to duck back down before my shields collapse under fire. _Garrus._ Suddenly, what Irana said comes rushing back to me. I can't tell the squad about it but Garrus? I _have_ to tell him. What's he going to say? He just got me back and now I find out part of me is still gone—not just gone but still _inside the Reapers_?! True, it could be argued that Irana was just trying to get to me, but the things she said were too close to what I already know to be true…

 _"…Garrus?"_

 _"Sara?"_

 _"…would you still love me if I wasn't human anymore?"_

 _"I love you no matter what, Sara Shepard. Nothing will ever change that."_

I look down at my right hand. The glove of my armor prevents me from locating the scar, but I know it's there. I lost faith that night, let the thought of this being real get to me, and he saved me. And if what he said was really true, finding out that it _is_ real won't change anything. I have to believe that, have to know that he'll—

Suddenly, a gunshot hits my cover, just barely missing my head. I duck down sharply, wait for my shields to come back completely, and then switch thermal clips. This is about the worst possible time to let the worries find me again. I need to focus on the fight around us. What Garrus does when I tell him about this can wait until I actually do.

Once my gun is ready, I vault over my cover and leap right into the mayhem, shooting down every Shadow in sight. Ash and James follow suit, Jack and EDI shortly behind them. Finally, Samara sends out a biotic attack that throws back three of the assassins coming at us and gives me, Wrex, and Grunt the chance to take them out. Seeing that the Shadows' numbers are down draws the rest of the squad out of cover and sends the fight into true chaos when we spread out and box them in. After only a few more seconds, it's down to one last Shadow. I prepare to deliver the last shot—

Before any of us can take it, the Shadow does something truly unexpected and drops an armed grenade. We don't have enough warning to pull back before it goes off. Looks like it's from the same design as the stinger ammo Irana was using, because the explosion not only takes out the Shadow that dropped it and throws us all back but also takes out all our shields at once. We hit the ground unexposed but also with no assassins in range to take a shot at us.

Or so it seems.

"Let's see you dodge this one!" Irana is on the balcony leading to the control room I threw her out of, aiming her sniper rifle straight at me.

Liara notices, too, because she throws out a biotic barrier to catch the shot and then sends it straight at Irana, launching her back against the wall.

While the others start to get back up, I start to pull out my own rifle to line up a shot at her. The sound of a gunshot going off behind us and Tali crying out makes me switch targets. Irana was a diversion. There's another Shadow on the other side of the room trying to take us out themselves. I don't bother pulling my gun after all. I arm a grenade of my own and throw it with all the force my enhanced strength permits. The Shadow moves to dodge it but isn't fast enough. When it goes off, it takes them with it. I start to turn my attention back to Irana only to find her gone from where I left her. The sound of shattering glass draws my attention to one of the windows near the roof. By the time I locate the source of the noise, Irana is already jumping through it. I run over but don't catch up in time. Looking through the window, I see no sign of her.

Taking only two seconds to vent my frustrations, I rush over to Tali. The others, seeing that it's over, are already moving to see what's wrong. Once I'm next to her, I can see. The Shadow in the back got her in the leg. "Are you alright?" I ask even as I move to put pressure on the wound.

"I'll be fine," she insists, though the weakness behind her voice betrays her pain, "I just— _ah_!" When I actually start applying pressure, the resulting gasp keeps her from continuing her argument.

I take a moment to examine the situation. Tali is injured, Irana is gone, we have no way of tracking her or Kendrys from here, and, from the look of it, EDI is remotely hacking their database right now. There's nothing more we can do here.

With a sigh, I force myself to turn on my COMM. "Shepard to _Normandy_. We're coming back. Get the med bay ready again."


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18 – Garrus

I've been pacing the hall between the mess and the battery for five minutes, Joker's voice still ringing in my head, telling me that someone got injured on a mission—he didn't even say how bad. _Please-don't-be-Shepard-please-don't-be-Shepard-please-don't-be-Shepard-please-don't-be-Shepard…_

Finally, I hear the elevator arrive on this deck. I instantly stop moving and turn to watch the squad come to the med bay. The same thought's still racing through my mind until the exact second they turn the corner.

Shepard and Liara come in, helping a limping Tali to Dr. Chakwas. She took a bullet to the leg. The injury itself seems minor, but it looks like it punctured her suit. Half of me starts worrying for her sake. The other half is filled with relief that Shepard is unhurt…and with guilt that I'm letting myself be relieved when Tali could be in danger.

Shepard stays back, talking briefly with Liara before the young asari heads to the XO office. Once Liara's out of sight, Shepard turns just enough that she notices I'm standing here. The second she does, I start making my way over to her. She moves in response, a second later and at a slower pace, and hugs me as soon as I'm close enough.

I respond similarly, holding her as close as I dare to. "What happened?"

"EDI caught Irana's signal," Shepard explains, pulling back just enough that she can look through the windows to the med bay and see Tali being tended to, "We snuck into an inactive transit station on Aephus. It was going well for a while, but they knew we were coming. They spotted us. We pulled through the fight well enough, but Irana got away and Tali got hit. She keeps insisting enough dextro medi-gel could have her back in the action in a few seconds, but she's already got a fever. I had EDI sterilize the med bay before we brought her in and Dr. Chakwas is going to make sure she's alright before she fixes her suit." She sighs sadly, looking down at the floor even as she lays her head against my shoulder. "It never ends."

I just keep my eyes on Tali, watching as she lets Dr. Chakwas examine and treat the wound. "…no. I guess it doesn't." Then I remember what I was doing before she came back to this deck and push her off, now fully understanding the emotional battle she was going through when I first woke up in the med bay last night. "Why didn't you tell me you were leaving?!"

She just looks at me sadly. "I tried. I came down here to but…well, you were asleep and I didn't have the heart to wake you when I knew you'd just end up worrying."

"Well, I woke up to Joker telling Chakwas to get the med bay ready. I thought—!" I just barely keep myself from finishing that—I don't know why I can't say it, but I don't have the heart to.

But she still looks at me, now with understanding. "…you thought it was me?"

I keep looking at her for a second before turning away, only nodding once I'm not looking at her anymore.

She sighs. "I'm sorry."

 _She knows I can't be mad at her. Not anymore, at least._ "…it's fine."

She just turns to look at the floor, pressing her hands together. When I shift my gaze back in her direction slightly, I see that she's actually resting her right hand in her left and looking at it. That draws me to look closer and catch sight of the look in her eyes. …something's wrong.

I finally turn completely to her, prepared to reach for her as soon as I know I need to. "…Sara?"

She looks at me… "…come on." She grabs my hand and pulls me after her, moving for the elevator. I follow her, only distantly taking note of the fact that she signals it to go to deck 1 once we're inside. I keep following when she steps into the cabin— "EDI, could you give us some privacy?"

That's when I stop dead in my tracks.

 _"…of course, Shepard," EDI complies hesitantly._ I don't blame her.

I look at Shepard, wondering what would've brought that on. For all the times we've had some private moment in here or in the battery, she's never gone so far as to force EDI to shut off her surveillance for it. Not even when she told me about what Kendrys did to her. There is no way this is going to be a good thing. "Sara, what's wrong?"

She keeps her back turned to me for five seconds too long. Each one that passes in silence is more unsettling. This isn't like her. Something's not… "…I had Irana in my sights. I was about to take the shot, too. But she…said some things that…I really didn't want to hear."

I don't even know for sure yet what this could be about and my insides are already clenching up. This is definitely not a good thing.

She achingly slowly turns to face me. "She said…Kendrys told her about…everything that happened to me after they remade me. …and about the attacks."

… _oh no._

She sighs as she stops turning, now facing my direction though she still won't look at me. "She said Kendrys was the one who ordered the test on my nervous system, not Orion. And that because there were no 'out of the ordinary' results, she figured out what was causing the attacks to begin with."

 _No, no, no, no, no!_

"She said the asari who put my mind back was raving, before she died, about how she could feel all the Reapers through that Husk." Then she forces herself to meet my eyes. I can't see the emotions inside hers beyond the way they're shining, as if she should be crying but doesn't have any tears to give. "…she said that part of me is still inside them."

I think my spirit just snapped. _This can't be happening. I've been doing everything I can to avoid this for two months. She was finally back for real, for good. I can't lose her like this now!_ "Shepard, I—"

Apparently, this is exactly the wrong response. By now, she knows that whether I call her by her last name or her first has a meaning. If my sole concern was to dissuade her, to make her believe this isn't true or doesn't change anything— _like she was expecting, like I was supposed to_ —I'd be trying to comfort her, to show her how much I care about her and what she means to me, and I'd use her first name. No, I called her "Shepard" like I did when I was helping her keep her faith during the war, trying to show her I was there for her and wouldn't let her break down. As if I was more worried about her reaction to this news than the news itself.

So she instantly knows why. "…did you know about this?" The fact that I don't work up the nerve to answer immediately makes it even worse. "Is _this_ what you were keeping from me?"

I wish I could say the answer was no, but nothing in the universe could ever make me deny her the truth. She means too much to me for me to lie to her and she deserves to know (it's too late to prevent that now). "…yes."

Suddenly, she can't look at me anymore. She turns away, burying her face in her hands. That hurts more than if she'd shot me.

"Sara, I'm sorry," I quickly start over to her, "I didn't—"

"When did you find out?!" she demands, throwing her hands aside to look at me again.

I can't keep myself from recoiling at the action, still two steps away from her. That was painful, too. I turn my gaze to the floor, forcing myself to come out with it. "Two months ago." I look down at her right hand, one of my talons softly reaching for it. Or, more accurately, for the scar across it, hidden by the lines across her palm. "The morning after…"

She pulls her hand back before I even touch it. Then she looks down at it, considering the scar herself.

When she stays silent, I find myself telling her everything: "You'd been having the attacks every day and…you kept telling us all not to worry, that it was nothing, but I had just got you back and I couldn't stand the thought that something might be hurting you. I had EDI and Liara check into it, see if they could figure out what was causing it and if there was some way we could help and…they found—"

"EDI and Liara knew, too?" she sighs almost sadly, closing her hand over the scar and letting her eyes fall shut.

"Liara does. EDI…purged it from her memory when…"

She lowers her hand and looks up at me again. I still can't read her eyes. That's scary to me. "…when you told her not to tell me?"

I can't vocalize an answer anymore. So I nod.

She sighs, shaking her head. "Why? Why keep this from me?" Now even her voice is unreadable. Of all the times I feared this moment, this almost seems worse than what I thought would happen.

"After what happened a few hours before I found out?" I point out, doing my best to keep myself steady (which is certainly not easy right now), "You already thought being connected to the Reapers at all had done something to you and just thinking that made you snap. How was I supposed to tell you that you were actually _still connected_ when I knew you'd break down? I've lost you enough times without—!"

Then she does the last thing I expected. She grabs hold of me and forces me to come in close…and kisses me.

I stay as close as I can when she pulls back, the deepest parts of me still afraid the worst is yet to come. "…you're not mad?"

She scoffs. "At you? Hardly." She takes hold of my hands, just like she did the first day I spent on the _Normandy_ after the war started. "You were right. Two months ago, hearing this would've killed me. But now…now I finally understand."

I look at her curiously, wondering what that could possibly mean.

"The Reapers aren't what they once were anymore. They never can be again. The Crucible made sure of that. But I knew that all along, even if I didn't realize it. My real fear has always been that the Shadows couldn't really give me an organic life back after that kind of transformation, no matter what measures they took. This whole time, I was afraid I was still a soulless machine. And, the truth is, for a while there, I was. Because the Shadows could restore my body and, despite what I thought was possible, they could put my consciousness back into it. But that's why my memories didn't come back when my mind did: they couldn't bring my soul back." Then she smiles again, and every worry inside me vanishes in the light it brings rushing through me. "That needed you."

I can't fight a small smile in response. One that brightens beyond my control when I see her eyes light up at the sight of it.

Still smiling, she brings one hand around me to pull me closer to her. "Connecting with the Reapers didn't change who I am. No one else could love you as much as I do." She then grasps my hand even tighter with her other one and brings it into what little space remains between us, into the perfect position at which each of us can feel the other's heartbeat. "This, what we have, is stronger than anything else in the universe. And nothing that the Shadows or Cerberus or the Reapers could ever do can get in the way of that." She leans into me, letting my free hand wrap around her to keep her here as she lays her head against my shoulder again. "…as long as you're with me…I don't have anything to be afraid of."

I stick as close to her as I can. Some part of me is worried I must be dreaming, but this has to be real. I never dreamed she would actually react well to news like this. "So…this is it? It's finally over?"

"Once Kendrys is out of the picture, absolutely." She leans back to meet my eyes again. "You remember what you said to me that night?"

The night she shattered the mirror and got the scar across her hand as a reminder? Definitely. "'I love you no matter what.'"

"And 'nothing will ever change that.' Remembering that got me through a lot lately." The gentle smile that follows draws me to pull her even closer and kiss her again. When she pulls back, she just barely holds back a small laugh. " _I_ love _you_ no matter what, Garrus Vakarian. And nothing will ever change that either."

I find myself smiling again. The way only she can make me. This is the moment I always dreamed of: her here with me, ready for us to spend the rest of our lives together for real if we decide to. As we keep close to each other, though, something occurs to me. "Should we tell EDI it's OK to come out now?"

She answers with a smirk. "In a minute." Then she takes hold of me and kisses me again.

And, naturally, that minute becomes an hour.

 _That night…_

I didn't even bother heading back to the battery this time. I just went straight for the observation deck. For apparently the first time since we started this chase, though, no one was here. So now I'm sitting on the couch by the viewing glass.

Flipping through the book Shepard brought in here the other day to see what all the fuss is about.

Before long, the door opens and Shepard herself comes through. "Tali's out of the med bay. Seems the wound wasn't as bad as it looked. Might slow her down a little for a few hours, but the medi-gel and her suit's medical systems have largely covered the damage."

I openly sigh with relief. "Good. Things are bad enough without one of the closest friends we have getting suspended by an injury."

"No kidding—" Then she notices the book in my hands. "Seriously? You're reading my books now?"

"I'm skimming. You seemed pretty attached, so I thought I'd see for myself. Besides, you did make us watch the vids…"

"Hey, it's not just me. Any human could tell you Tolkien was one of the greats."

I just give her a brief smirk before setting the book aside. "I'll leave it to you. I prefer to live the adventure."

"So I've noticed," she smiles as she sits down next to me. And then kicks her boots off and props her legs up on me.

I smile back, letting my hand rest on her leg.

She lays her head against the back of the couch, looking over at me almost longingly. "Did you ever think we'd make it this far?"

I simply look back at her for a moment. "…no. To be honest, I half-expected us to both die in the core to begin with. And after that…well, we were still both soldiers, and the whole turian-human thing was always going to be in the way…"

Her expression softens even as her hand slowly drifts up to my scars again. "And now?"

Before I answer, I lean into her hand, just enough to tell her not to move it. "Now I can't see how anything could get in the way." Not letting my other hand leave its place on her leg, I reach over to her, gently sliding her light red hair away from her face. "I can't imagine life without you."

Her eyes shine as she smiles, happier than I've seen her in a long time. …actually, I don't think I've ever seen her this happy. That…says a lot. The sight makes me light up in response, yearning to let these feelings take over. As my other hand keeps up its gentle motions through her hair, my fingers brush against the bottoms of her feet—

She suddenly pulls them halfway back sharply, choking back what she's apparently hoping I can't tell is a genuine laugh. But I can tell. And I know exactly what would draw that kind of reaction.

"You're kidding," I can't keep myself from smirking, "It's in your feet, too?"

"Don't even think about it!"

"Oh, we're way past that!" Before she can stop me, I start "tickling" her feet again.

She curls up with laughter, trying unsuccessfully to kick me away. I take in the sound of her laughter, the sight of her smiling, the feeling of her moving under my hands. I've loved witnessing this reaction since I discovered it—the one woman I love most in the entire galaxy lighting up with sheer delight. If anyone deserves to feel just one moment of pure, unbridled joy, no matter how they get it, it's her. So I keep going, lighting up myself in response as—

Suddenly, the lounge door opens. "Whoa!"

Shepard and I both instantly pull back from each other and turn to see who's there.

James looks back for a second before groaning and putting his head in his hand. "I can never un-see this."

Shepard just glares fiercely as she pulls her legs back and crosses them, tucking her feet under. "Well, you should knock before entering a room!"

"This is a public deck!"

"Not when we're in here, it's not!"

"Hey! It's not entirely my fault! EDI, you know you could've warned me!"

 _"Due to their continued concerns for privacy in their intimate moments, I elected to remain strictly observant of this interaction," EDI responds, "I was unaware intervention might be necessary."_

I respond to that by folding my arms and glaring at the ceiling. "Is it that or are you just messing with us?"

 _"No comment."_

Shepard groans, laying her head back against the end of the couch. "Did you just come in here so EDI could get something to amuse Joker with, Vega, or did you actually need to tell us something?"

"The second one," Vega answers, "Liara said she might have found something from what we got on Aephus and she wanted to show everyone in the CIC."

Shepard just looks at him for a moment. When that moment's over, she pulls herself to her feet, grabs her boots back, and starts for the elevator. As I follow alongside James, I distinctly notice that she's visibly tensing. Something's not right.

"Shepard," Liara says as soon as everyone's gathered around the galaxy map, "I think I managed to locate a base Irana was sending signals to. Maybe—"

"Scrap it," Shepard snaps as she takes the front. The rest of the squad immediately looks at her in shock. Including me.

"…what?"

"Scrap it! We're not tracking them! And all the data we've gotten from the Shadows back to the first transmission they sent to Tali? Delete it!"

"Shepard," EDI points out, "if we delete the information we have, we will be starting the search from scratch—"

"Exactly! Kendrys has been two steps ahead of us this whole time and I'm sick of it! Nevos was a trap, Aephus was a trap, _Noveria_ was a trap! The Citadel was a trap! And we might have gotten through it all alive so far, but if we keep up this twisted game of hers, she will wear us down. Since that's exactly what she wants, I'm not letting it go on! Get rid of everything she and Irana allowed into our system so far, we're doing this the old-fashioned way."

"Great," Jack groans, "This is gonna take forever."

"Not if we narrow down our search." With that, Shepard calls up the galaxy map, letting it highlight every planet and station in its range. "What do we know so far?"

Ashley sighs, taking the front. "Well, obviously, she wouldn't send us on wild goose chases that lead us to the same place she's at, so we can count on her not being very close to any landing site we've hit since this mess started."

EDI adjusts the map in response, closing off Nevos, Aephus, Noveria, and the Citadel.

"She also wouldn't use a base we already know about if she's trying to delay us," Miranda adds.

So EDI closes off Korlus, Ilium, and Omega.

"If you ask me, she's nowhere near Palaven," I step in, "We were right there four days before this all started—she would've made a move."

"Good," Wrex says, plainly sarcastic, "That's eight planets down. About 5000 to go."

"We may be able to take away a large percentage of our remaining options," EDI steps in, taking over completely, "During our conversation with Kendrys on Nevos, she mentioned acting on a contract in progress and said that there were people 'across the pond' from her. This means she is likely on an inhabited planet or environmental station with a known body of water—"

"Wait," Shepard suddenly cuts back in, "…what did you just say she said?"

"She referred to people 'across the pond.'"

Shepard looks…I'm not sure there's a word for it. Like she just realized we've been searching through a whole street in the dark only to find out the true danger was right behind us the whole time. That…that must mean that…

I turn to her. "Sara? Is something wrong?"

She keeps looking at the galaxy map, still considering her sudden revelation… "…I know where she is."

All of us instantly turn to look at her in astonishment.

"What?! How? _Where_?"

She looks at me briefly, as if unsure how to explain it. "She specifically said 'across the pond.' Some humans used to call a certain ocean 'the Pond.'" She turns to the galaxy map, moving into one system in particular. "She's on Earth." She hesitates to say the rest. But still she zooms in on Earth itself, to one city in particular. "…she's in London."


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19 – Shepard

 _Kendrys is in London._

I've only been to London once in my life. Despite all my wandering around Earth in my early days, I was largely confined to the North American continent and very rarely strayed from it. Certainly never across the entire Atlantic Ocean—"the Pond" as the London locals called it. Even during my "incarceration" before Earth first fell to the Reapers, I was kept solely at Alliance Headquarters. When the Reapers attacked, we made contact with UK Headquarters. That was how I knew the end was upon us.

 _Now Kendrys is in London._

I guess I should consider that ironic. The one time in my life I did go to London was the day I died. And Kendrys was one of the three people responsible for my return. Now she's there. I suppose it's possible she could be anywhere in the England area for her comment to be in context, but it has to be London. It's just too…perfect.

 _Kendrys is in London._

The certainty behind that thought as well as the repetitive revelation itself strikes a very specific chord. Anyone observing me would probably think some part of me is the least bit afraid or anxious or even, dare I say, contemplatively nostalgic. No. I'm actually mad. London isn't where I died. It's where my death sentence was written, yes, but I wasn't truly dead until the Reapers claimed me. The Citadel is home to the place I died—the Catalyst chambers. The fact that it was hovering over London that day, that I got into it through the conduit in London, is merely circumstantial.

Garrus probably won't share this view considering his side of the story, but London is special to me, partially because my mentor was born there but mostly because of what happened the day I lost him. I look back on the moments Garrus and I spent together that day in that city, war-torn and Reaper-crawling as it was, and I feel absolute joy somewhere deep inside me. Where only a few days ago the memories actually got to me, I let them reach me with fondness, remembering the way we touched, the last time we kissed before that final run, the way he looked at me, the last words we shared, how we reached for each other even as we broke apart. I see London as the place where we spent our last real day together before life got in the way so completely, the place I was convinced beyond any spec of a doubt that our love was real and unbreakable. Even by death.

So, yeah, I'm angry. Because the thought that the woman who's caused us both so much misery would be hiding out in the city we essentially "loved and lost" in…the idea that she's there is unacceptable.

Which brings me from my current mental state to what's happening with me physically. After setting our course for the Sol System, I came up to my cabin alone and ended up in the same position I'm in now: leaning against the wall by the couch and looking down at my omni-tool display. The data's not on the Shadows this time. It's on London itself. Looks like it was largely repaired after the war, but it still seems trashed enough for Kendrys to easily find a hideout in it.

She's gonna regret the day she set foot there. …hmm. She did say once during her little experiments that "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." What does that say about what does kill you then brings you back again?

Allowing myself two seconds to smirk at the consideration, I look over the data again. After a minute, something else catches my eye. Curious, I move to that. Right. After the Battle of Earth, one of the things they brought in during the restoration process was a memorial to the hero of the Reaper War. Namely, me. Looking over it, I feel a memory move into my mind. I smile, turning off my omni-tool and laying my head back against the wall as I let the reminiscence fill my senses.

 _I was sitting on my bed, watching the fish swimming around the tank. I'd have to thank Traynor later for watching them and the hamster so well. It was strangely comforting to find something familiar waiting for me here. I couldn't deny that the idea of coming home to an empty tank would probably have been enough to trigger the emotional backlash that'd been striking me every so often. But seeing the small aquatic creatures moving through the water was oddly relaxing, enough to take my mind well off my problems._

 _Then my door opened. I turned to see who was there and found myself lighting up. No, this was a much better way to take my mind off my problems._

 _Garrus smiled, reflecting my response to his entrance. I hadn't been back long. Clearly, he wasn't used to finding me in here yet. As if to confirm that suspicion, he stepped over, wrapping his arms around me as I stood up and did the same to him then eagerly drawing us into a kiss. When we hesitantly pulled back, he kept me as close as he possibly could, ever so slightly tightening his hold on me. "I keep expecting to walk in here and find you still gone."_

 _I tightened my own hold on him as well. "I'm never leaving again."_

 _"I know. I'm just afraid this is a dream." His hand reached up to my face, softly pressing itself against my skin as if to make sure this was real. "You have no idea how hard it was losing you."_

 _I pressed my own hand to his, wrapping my fingers around his talons. "I think I can imagine. When my memories were…out of my reach…I just felt empty. The thought of living without you now…" I turned to meet his eyes. "We're not gonna give each other a chance to go through that, alright?"_

 _"Far from it," he nodded._

 _I smiled softly before pulling away from his grasp, bringing our hands together. "So you know about my crazy year. I'd kind of like to hear what you've been up to."_

 _He tensed at that one. "…I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about it."_

 _"I can imagine. But I'd rather hear it from you than secondhand from EDI." When his tension shifted instantaneously to discomfort, telling me he agreed, I stepped back and sat down on my bed again, crossing my legs under me. Then gesturing to the empty side of the mattress._

 _He smiled lightly as an answer then silently sat down beside me on the bed. As he considered where to begin, I patiently awaited it, giving him the time he needed to convince himself to go through with it. After a moment, he essentially sighed and looked down at where my hands were resting over each other on top of the sheets between my legs. He almost seemed tempted to reach over and take hold of them, but he didn't move. "…after you left us on the ship, we were caught in the shockwave from the Crucible's activation. We crashed on one of the uncharted worlds not too far from Sol. I was unconscious for most of it, but…when I woke up…that's when Liara told me you were gone."_

 _I looked at him as I felt my sympathy rising._

 _"Ash and James set up the memorial for Admiral Anderson, but they let me put your name on the wall. …that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. That was the moment I knew you weren't coming back this time." Even though that notion had been disproven rather substantially, he still tensed up again, this time almost retreating into himself to prevent some kind of emotional outbreak he wouldn't want me to see._

 _It was at that point the sympathy took over and I found my hand reaching to press itself against his scars._

 _He calmed down, leaning into my touch longingly. It took him a moment to start talking again. He probably forgot he was actually telling me something. "It took almost a month for us to get back to Earth. Of course, by the time the ship was repaired, the relays had been fixed. So we ended up waiting there with all the troops that hadn't gone home yet while they finished figuring out who wasn't coming back with them when they got their ships moving again. The Alliance set up a sort of memorial service for everyone…mainly for you. I…didn't stick around for long. I actually went between here and the battery until the others were back on the ship. Liara and Tali tried to talk me down at least a little before I went home, but they weren't all that successful. I didn't even talk to my dad and sister much after a few days, but…I think they knew why."_

 _I listened quietly as he recounted the past 13 months. Every now and then, he'd start to freeze up and I could see that talking about it was affecting him. Depending on the current condition of the story, I'd offer another brief showing of my affection or deliver a line of playful banter, drawing the responses needed to make sure he stayed my Garrus and didn't go through some sort of breakdown like he'd been enduring for so long. I was back and I was going to make sure he kept the happiness he deserved. It wasn't until he reached the point where the Shadows came in that_ I _started to tense up and he was forced to occasionally give me a gentle touch to remind me where we were and not just where we'd been. But when he came to the part where he saw the message I left for him the day I died…he couldn't bring himself to say out loud what his reaction to it was, but I got the feeling that seeing_ that _after 13 months with nothing must have been more than even a turian could take. And Garrus had always been his own kind of turian._

 _So I took hold of him and kissed him, reveling in the way he returned it. When I pulled back that time, I found myself wrapped around him._

 _He simply laid his head against mine, sighing softly. "You broke me down, Shepard." Mostly playful. But also_ honest _._

 _I sighed with him. "Believe me, it was as hard for me to say as it was for you to hear."_

 _He didn't argue with that. But he also didn't let me reassume my position on the other side of the bed from him, leading me to instead lean against him. I gladly did so, laying my head on his shoulder as he kept his arms around me for the rest of the story. I listened as he talked about how the poison affected him, the trap the Shadows set on the Citadel and how he discovered it, how he and Tali rushed to Omega to free their captured squad-mates, how Miranda used Mordin's notes and his old assistant to formulate the antidote, and the final assault on the Shadows' main base. "…then we breeched the chamber they were keeping the clone in and…the clone turned out to be you. And I…guess you know the rest."_

 _I smiled to myself briefly. "Yeah." Then I leaned back to meet his starry blue eyes. "As I recall, you saved my life."_

 _He smirked. "No more than you've saved mine."_

 _"Still…I don't believe I ever properly thanked you." So I moved in close and kissed him again._

 _Only then did he move his hand away from holding me, reaching up to pull me closer. But when his hand found its way to my face, he froze. I finally pulled away to see what the problem was and found him pressing harder. He was feeling for my bones. The bones that Kendrys personally pieced together and modified._

 _I could still remember the moment he told me that he saw what the Shadows did to me in their efforts to resurrect me. He seemed like he was affected by it more than I was. I needed to show him that they didn't really change anything. So I took hold of his hand as it made its way down the base of my skull to my upper spine and drew it down my collar to my chest, where my heart was beating just a little harder from his touch. After only a few seconds of feeling it, he smiled with me and reached over to kiss me where he'd been feeling my altered bones._

 _I couldn't keep myself from letting off a small laugh as he kept going and moved down to my neck. "Seems like you moved up on Palaven. Aren't they gonna want you back?"_

 _"The position's mobile," he responded as he pulled me closer, his hand not moving from its place against my heart._

 _My laugh in response to that was real. And he knew it._

I smile to myself as the memory fades to the back of my mind. It's nice to have moments like that to look back on. _I can always count on him to give me my best memories._

That's when my door opens and he walks in again. "Sara. Are you OK?"

Looks like one of those good memories is about to come. "Yeah. I'm fine."

He takes a few steps closer, as if he's not convinced.

So I let him see the way I brighten with my new idea before I go through with it. "You know the best part about a battle that decides our fates?"

He recognizes the line immediately. Smirking with me, he follows along: "Winning it?"

Only then do I step away from the wall, moving steadily closer to him with every word. "I was thinking it's a good excuse to remind the ones you care about that…" Then I reach over and take his hands. "…well, you care about them." I smile at him, knowing full well my eyes are alight the way he loves so much. "Keep me company?"

He smiles as he pulls me closer. "You read my mind." And kisses me.

I let myself fall into him, pressed so close to him I can feel his heart pounding as I—

 _"Shepard," EDI cuts in._

I give up.

I groan, pulling back as Garrus responds in kind. "What is it this time, EDI?"

 _"I merely wished to inform you that I am withdrawing my sensors from this deck and instead forwarding all requests for you to the next officer capable of responding, ensuring you are not disturbed until we reach our destination."_

…what?

I stop moving. I can't tell if I'm actually in shock or waiting for her to say "That was a joke." When she stays quiet and I notice Garrus isn't responding either, I finally bring myself to say "Uh…thanks, EDI."

 _"Of course, Commander."_ And with that, she "steps out."

I then turn to Garrus. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"'Finally!'?" he questions with a smirk.

"Absolutely." So I throw myself against him again, picking up right where we left off.

Almost an hour later, we're lying on the bed together, still holding each other close. I smile ever so slightly as I feel our hearts beating together and we pull each other closer. _So this is what contentment feels like. I love it._

He sighs quietly as the lights dim around us (guess EDI's still active in here, just not getting involved). "We have a big fight ahead of us, don't we?"

I shift positions slightly, allowing me to move closer and hold him tighter. "Scared?"

From the way his heart jumps and his grip on me tightens until I think I feel his talons digging into my lower back, I can tell what he's thinking: _Of losing you again? Definitely._ But he still means what he says: "No. We've faced worse and made it out alive."

That we have.

He then notices the way he's clutching me and eases up, moving his hands up away from where he's been grasping me. "What about you?"

I think about my answer for a moment. I'm not afraid. Not anymore. I need to reassure him of that. So I press myself to him so that our bodies blend together and no space comes between us, laying my head against his so I can whisper into his ear "I'm stronger than she is. …and you said you'd never leave me."

I feel him smile as he holds me here. That makes me smile back. Holding to that, I simply lie here with him, my head resting on his shoulder and the rhythm of his heart against mine slowing drawing me to my dreams.

… _until the nightmares find me again._

 _It always starts the same way. The_ Normandy _after Thessia. Taking Liara and Tali to the surface of Lusia. Locating the distress signal and discovering it was a trap. The meeting with Orion. Giving in to his demand._

 _But it never ends the same._

 _I still feel my gun ringing with the three gunshots he forced me to fire even as the weapon falls from my hand. Remorse and horror flood through me, but the thought of why I did it overwhelms both, almost bringing me to tears._

 _"And here I thought you wouldn't actually do it. Nice work."_

 _Every internal organ I have lights on fire at the sound of that voice, my fists clenched so tight in absolute_ hate _that my nails dig into my flesh. "Just return the favor."_

 _He sighs. "Fine. If you insist." Then he sends the signal through his omni-tool—_

"Life support disabled."

 _I instantly turn to glare at him. "What are you doing?!"_

 _"I never actually said I'd let them go if you helped me," he answers, the shadowy smirk I couldn't possibly despise more alight in his eyes._

 _I move without thinking, jumping at him, but two of the Shadows behind me grab me before I can do any damage, pinning me down._

 _Orion simply looks down at me in contempt, not even paying attention to the fact that his omni-tool is ringing with the message_ "Five minutes of oxygen remaining."

 _I can feel the thought rising—_ I failed…I failed _—but it doesn't take hold. Because every part of me is screaming that something's wrong._

 _EDI would've known the systems were hacked before the assassins boarded. Yes, Orion could've usurped control of life support, but she still would've been able to warn the crew to arm themselves and prepare for a lack of oxygen—she was able to do that much when the_ Collectors _scrambled our systems._ The _Normandy_ wouldn't fall.

 _"You lived up to my expectations, I'll give you that," Orion says as he pulls his gun, "But there's no place for a Spectre here anymore."_

 _Orion and his Shadows would've had to keep their eyes on me until we actually reached the Citadel. Yes, my options would've been limited when the Shadows had me, but I still could've found some way out by then. And if I couldn't, I could've taken advantage of the chaos during the siege itself and helped C-Sec hold them back._ They couldn't take the Citadel head-on.

 _"Sorry, Commander, but I'm afraid our business has concluded," Orion continues as he cocks the gun and aims at me, "Thanks for the effort, though."_

… _at this time, there was someone else at his side meant to help head it all. Yes, her involvement would've helped to ensure that the coup itself succeeded, but that just meant he wouldn't be alone here. She'd be the one to take this shot, not him._ …he had someone, too.

 _That's the one that I know is true. Because she walks over now. "Now that's no fun, Killian." She steps up to his side, leaning against him with her dark hair falling over her malevolent honey-colored eyes as they meet the smoky haze of his own shadowy irises. "Can I kill her?"_

 _He smiles. "Absolutely."_

 _So she runs her hand down his arm to grasp the gun._

 _That's when I see my opening. And I take it. The assassins holding me down only have a hold of my arms and neck. I'm on my knees, so using my legs would require too much maneuvering, but that doesn't stop me. I twist one around, throwing myself against the assassin to my left. It hits just hard enough to make them flinch, giving me a chance to flip their hold on my arm and pull back, throwing them into the one at my right. By then, I'm free to jump Orion again. He's expecting that, so he holds the gun in place to shoot me off and fires._

 _But I veer to my left right as he fires, dodging the shot itself, and catch Kendrys instead._

 _I hold her back, making use of the knowledge I have to make sure she actually can't get free. Orion is still prepared to fire, but I fire up my omni-blade and keep it ready to strike his girlfriend right in the heart. At this angle, if he took the only shot he has at me—a headshot—I'd pull back and the blade would still go through. Psychotic as he is, this is the one person in the entire galaxy he won't risk._

 _"Turn the life support back on and call your assassins back," I make my move, "or she doesn't make it either."_

 _"You're bluffing," Orion growls, "The great Commander Shepard, hero of the galaxy? She's not some lowlife hostage-taker."_

 _"Oh, really? Your brilliant plan had me kill the Council so there's no way I'm keeping my Spectre status. The Alliance won't let me stay active duty after what you've done with me. I don't have a family to go back to and, with all the chaos you've caused, the odds of Earth making it out of this war anything short of decimated are getting lower by the minute. Kill the only people left in the galaxy I care about now and you'll leave me with nothing left to lose. Do you really wanna see what that looks like?!"_

 _Orion looks at me for a moment, his grip on the gun tightening with every passing second…until, finally, he growls and drops it, reversing his last command into his omni-tool._

"Life support enabled. Systems reinitializing."

 _"There. Now what?"_

 _I look between him and Kendrys for a moment before disabling my omni-blade and punching her, throwing her down unconscious. "I, unlike you, live up to my word." …then I snatch the gun he dropped and hold it up at him. "And I promised myself you wouldn't make it out of this alive."_

 _He focuses his barrier, keeps me from taking a kill shot._

 _But that's not where I'm aiming. I take a shot at his left hand. As he cries out, his omni-tool is completely disabled, cutting off his control of the_ Normandy _systems. I can't keep myself from letting off a small smirk as I turn on my COMM again. "EDI, it's Shepard. …it's over."_

 _And I pull the trigger._

And I wake up.

I look around the room for a second as I realize what just happened. _…I won._ I beat the impossible. That's never happened before. I've always relived the same disasters in my nightmares, I've never been able to fix it. But I did it this time. _And because of Kendrys. Talk about ironic._

"Sara?"

I don't turn over to look at him. I just push myself up to a sitting position, the events of the dream still ringing through my head. I can practically feel my fingers buzzing from a shot I never fired. I hold them out where I can see them, looking at them and wondering why I feel the ghost of a dream inside my senses—

…dream. Not a nightmare. A dream. I…I really…

"Sara, what's wrong?" Garrus finally asks, sitting up beside me with his arm already around me.

I keep my eyes on the floor, wondering how to answer. After a moment, I know just how. "…nothing. I just realized something."

He simply looks at me curiously.

I look back at him… "Kendrys needs to die."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20 – Garrus

I'd like to think I've gotten pretty used to traveling the mass relay network over the years. I got better at it once I got used to EDI's warnings when to brace for deceleration. Considering the ship has inertial dampeners anyway, it's never really been that difficult to keep it steady.

So when the ship seems to stagger back so hard that I hit the floor, the first thing I say (after "OW!", of course) is "What just happened?!"

"Sorry!" Shepard is clutching the wall on the other side of the room, frantically attempting to regain her footing, "Sorry. Didn't think we'd hit it that hard." She sighs as she stands up straight, still clutching the wall. "Cortez showed me how to shut off the inertial dampeners on the Kodiak when we were on leave on the Citadel during the war. Sometimes I have EDI do it just on deck 1, usually when we're not moving that fast." She then turns to glare at the ceiling. "You could've told me we were already engaging the Sol relay."

 _"You did classify yourself as an 'adrenaline junkie,' Commander," EDI comments._

"That's it. You're spending too much time with Joker. Don't make me put you two on separate decks."

Taking a second to smirk at the comment, I clutch the bed to bring myself to my feet. Easier said than done. It feels like the whole deck is shaking. It's not that bad now that we're back to regular FTL speeds, but I can see how turning off the dampeners during the relay jump might have been…invigorating. "Wow. Well, I can understand why _you_ might enjoy this."

"You should've been in the shuttle."

I'm not even willing to attempt trying to cross the deck to reach her until she turns the dampeners back on, so I just sit down on the bed, ready to grab it if we suddenly shift speeds again. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long," Shepard answers, leaning against the wall and looking up at the viewing glass overhead, "I just wanted to see us come through." Slowly, she lets a small smile reach her. "Yeah. Those are definitely my stars."

I look up at the glass, watching the stars fly past. That's right. This is the sky she grew up in. And she didn't exactly get to admire the view last time she dropped by. I find myself leaning back slightly to better take in the sight. Adjust the angle and the distance only slightly, and this is what she saw every night for 15 years. It's not too distinctive from what I saw on Palaven at the same time, but it's still…pretty spectacular, really. "And I suppose you could name them all, huh?"

"Just the major constellations. I loved watching them, but I wasn't exactly an astronomy junkie so much as for the adrenaline. I was more into mythology. …and staying alive."

I can't keep myself from giving her a small laugh. "You know, we got to see Palaven together, so… Well, like I said, I did get to see your world without Reapers pouring over it, but…I didn't get to do it with you. Maybe we should stick around for a while when this is over."

Shepard smirks. "Sure, I could show you the sights. I'm not that familiar with London when it's not a battleground, but New York or LA I could definitely do. 'Here's the place I first learned to run for my life,' 'here's where I picked up my archery skills,' and didn't they name a shelter after me?"

I shake my head at her, still letting a slight smile through. "Were you this snarky before you died?"

"Only with you." With that, she leans back, still holding onto the wall. "Alright. I'm turning the dampeners back on. If we're in the Sol system now, we should be entering the atmosphere in less than an hour. We should get ready." So she turns to input something into her terminal and I feel the room steady again.

I sigh with relief. "Warn me first next time you—" Then I try to get up and find my legs still shaking, forcing me to lean against the bed for a moment.

Shepard notices. "Oh. Here's a warning: it takes a little while to remember how to stand up straight."

I just give her a look.

She sighs. "Don't worry. Next time, I'll try not to do it when you're in the room." Then she, still leaning against the walls, moves into the bathroom, leaving me to get my balance back.

A few deep breaths later, and I've steadied myself out enough to get back on my feet. Once I'm convinced I'm capable of walking again, I start moving to prepare for the upcoming mission. It shouldn't be too much trouble, but we really do have a big fight ahead of us. Plus, there's the personal problems I'm harboring. Some part of me is a little bit worried for Shepard's sake. "Kendrys needs to die." That's what she told me just a few hours ago. That's not something she'd typically say. My worry keeps coming to the same conclusion: _She made me promise not to lose it, so she won't do it herself…right?_

But she won't. That fire in her eyes isn't the same vengeful flare that was in mine when we were hunting Sidonis. It's closer to what hit her at Sanctuary or on Thessia or when she thought of what the Reapers were doing to Earth and Palaven. No, there's no doubt in my mind she's holding to that ever present mantra of hers—"Justice, not vengeance"—just looking for that justice harder than ever before. But I've still never seen her get this way before. Not even for the Illusive Man, not even for Harbinger, not even for _Orion_. I'm not sure if it's conviction, anxiety, or all the hard emotions she's been bottling up her whole life suddenly coming free at once. The first two we can deal with; in the case of the third option…we really do need to kill Kendrys as soon as possible.

No sooner has the thought taken hold than Shepard comes back out, seeming ready for action already despite her armor and guns still waiting on deck 5. "Alright, we need to be ready for anything. You saw the security Kendrys put on the bases she _wanted us_ to get into. I shudder to think what she'd put on her actual stronghold. And if the words 'They have a cave troll' even cross my mind—!"

"Sara…" I find myself cutting her off.

She stops moving before turning to look at me. Anyone else would just see it as inquisitive but I know she's worried. Not about what's ahead of us but about why _I_ would be worried. Because the way I said her name proves I'm worried about something. I can't deny that.

So I come out with it: "…you can't let anything happen. To either of us." For once, I'm not talking about our inevitable (though, hopefully, far distant) mortality. I'm certainly not talking about our relationship status. I'm not even talking about our looming concerns for how we'll react when we come across Irana and Kendrys again and face a chance for testing the line between justice and vengeance she's warned against practically since the day we met. This is about what comes _after_ this. And she knows it.

She gives me an understanding look for a moment before reaching over to take my hand. "Nothing's going to happen. Besides, we've got 11 other people watching our backs, remember?" That soft half-smile I've gotten so attached to comes back, bringing her eyes to just barely shimmer as she steps closer to me. "And if anything does happen…" The hand not holding mine reaches up to my scars gently as her head slightly tilts to her right. "…just remember this." Then she leans in closer and kisses me. She doesn't move otherwise, even when I respond in kind. Not until she breaks off, only then moving to lean against me and whisper in my ear: "I love you, Garrus Vakarian. I always have, from the first moment I saw you. And I _always_ will."

My free hand wraps around her tightly, keeping her from pulling even an inch away from this position. I close my eyes and lay my head against her, burying my face in her hair. After a few seconds of simply holding her here, feeling her loving touch and her beating heart and the rise and fall of every contented breath, I turn just enough to whisper into her ear in return: "I loved you from the second I first laid eyes on you, Sara Shepard. I'll never stop loving you. …never."

I feel her smile as she nestles herself against me, letting me keep her close.

I smile to myself, losing myself in her. This is one of those moments when I find it hard to believe it's physically possible to be so _happy_. I suppose it must be possible, but only with the one person you love most, the one you would trust with your whole heart. _Only with your_ kalwen _._ I feel my thoughts fade away as I simply hold her, leaning against the wall so I don't have to keep focus away from her in order to stay upright. Even during my near-death experience when this happened, I knew something was wrong. Now I know it's real and I have absolutely no reason to fight it. So I fall into her, my only concept of time the rhythm of her heart and lungs against me, my senses entirely devoted to this embrace. This is most definitely the moment I would keep if I could stop time forever.

"Garrus?" her voice suddenly cuts through the silence.

I'm not really paying attention, so shifting in response to her saying my name must be a reflex.

"We need to get to the bridge."

It takes a few seconds to register what she's saying. When she does, I don't bother hiding my absolute disappointment.

She sighs. "I know. …I wish we didn't have to move either."

I still don't move, actually.

She leans back as much as she can in my grasp. Which turns out to be just enough to give me a sharp yet playful glare. "Don't make me order you."

"We're still not on duty," I point out, not moving or letting go.

She shakes her head at me before letting go of me and pushing my hands off of her. "You remember what I promised you. The moment we're back on the ship when this mission is over, we'll have nothing to hold us down anymore. We'll have all the time in the world."

The thought certainly makes me eager to get there. "I suppose we could live here for quite some time longer. Though we do still have those plans to retire someplace warm and tropical…"

"It's getting harder to imagine _when_ we'll finally get around to that, but…I can't wait." Giving me one last smile, she heads for the elevator.

I watch her until she's out of sight. Every second we're more than five feet from each other is hard, like part of me is missing. _Well, of course, it feels like that. Part of my heart is missing._ I don't know how I finally convince myself to move and finish getting ready before following her down to deck 2. I'm just glad when I'm done and can take myself down to the CIC.

I'm growing restless when I step out of the elevator, but I calm down the second it closes behind me. The door to the cockpit is open, so I can see her even from here, leaning against the wall of the bridge and waiting for the ride to reach an end. Though every other part of her seems relaxed, her foot is tapping the metal floor impatiently. Maybe she is harboring some anxiety. She seems pretty eager to be done with this. I can't say I blame her.

I step across the deck to her, moving just slightly faster than I usually do until I'm directly behind her. As I do, it occurs to me that is probably what Solana was talking about when, shortly after I introduced her to the famous Commander Shepard, she started teasing me about how I was acting around my girlfriend. Guess I should be thanking Shepard for how she countered it, considering they were both apparently right.

"Not much further, huh?" I ask as I step up to her side.

She smiles at the sound of my voice. "On several counts."

"Still got a bunch of assassins in our way, though."

"Someone's trying to kill us?" she asks, feigning shock. Then she shrugs. "Must be Tuesday." Smirking as I laugh, she turns back to the "windows" and looks through almost contemplatively. "Well. Welcome back, Shepard."

I look through the viewing glass and down at Earth as we enter the atmosphere. I can see London from here as we draw closer to it. The sight of it strikes a rather painful chord inside me. I've only been to this city twice before. Once at the Battle of Earth, when I last saw Shepard before she died. And once exactly one year later, when my grief for her reached its pinnacle.

Before those thoughts can reach too far, I feel someone's hand take hold of mine. I turn to see who and find Shepard looking back at me. Just the sight of her brings me to smile, clutching her hand tighter. What happened here before doesn't matter. We're ending this here today. Together.

Giving me a brief smile, Shepard turns to Liara. "Well, we're here. Any ideas where we park?"

"I was running through the data gathered from the command center on Omega," Liara says, standing behind the co-pilot seat and going through her omni-tool, "The Shadows did have a base on Earth before the Reapers hit. And, based on the description, it was definitely in London."

"Guess we're on the right track then. Got some COMM signals in there EDI can trace?"

"Better. The coordinates."

"I've never been so glad you're the Broker now."

Liara simply gives her a small smile before sending the coordinates to Joker.

"Got it," Joker confirms, "Should be able to get in range within five minutes. We can move out then."

"Alright," Shepard nods, "EDI, tell the team to get ready. We're going in." Once the order's given, she lets go of my hand and turns to head down to deck 5. Liara, EDI, and I follow not far behind.

James is already in his armor when we come down. "About time," he comments as Shepard goes to retrieve her armor and the rest of us pull out our weapons, "I've been ready to go all night."

"Are you ever _not_ ready to go?" Shepard comments from the other end of the deck.

"Why do you ask? Planning to test me?"

"I will hurt you."

That gets him to back off, at least. "Easy, Lola, I'm just messing with you."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but leave the jokes to EDI."

It takes a lot of restraint not to start laughing at that one, considering I said the exact same thing to him just a couple months ago.

That's when the rest of the squad comes in.

"Anything we should know before we head in, Shepard?" Miranda asks as she pulls out her gun.

"Other than what you already know? Kendrys didn't want us to get here so soon, but she did want us to find her eventually, so we might not need to expect a lot of security. There's probably no more than Orion used on Omega, but still enough to wear us down if we're not careful. She knows enough about us to know how to throw us off, so we should be ready for anything, but I guess we'd all be used to that by now. Our biggest concern is that the best Shadows at her disposal are going to be here, which means it'll be just as much trouble to get to her as it will be to take her down." It's at this point that she steps out to the front, strapping on the last of her armor. "Like Garrus has pointed out, though, we've had worse."

"Back to Grunt's plan, then?" Jacob smirks, "'Go in, shoot them all, and don't die.'"

"Well, there's no strategy incorporated, but it's actually a decent plan," Shepard says as she finishes pulling on the glove of her armor and heads over to her weapons locker, "No different from what we usually do, I suppose."

Once again, I find myself looking her over even as I check my rifle one last time. I guess I missed the sight of her in that customized N7 armor more than I thought. It's certainly an improvement over that all-black getup the Shadows had her in, all lightweight and…sleek and…form-fitting…actually, never mind.

 _"Uh, Shepard?" Joker's voice suddenly intrudes over the COMM system, "We've got a problem."_

Shepard doesn't bother keeping herself from groaning as she throws her submachine gun into its holster. "When _isn't_ there a problem?" As she snatches her pistol, she turns up to glare at the intercom. "What is it this time?!"

 _"The base is in one of the old industrial centers the Reapers tore up. Looks like our new head Shadow seriously upgraded it when she moved in. The security on the building is too tight, all the doors and windows are locked and triple-encrypted from the inside."_

"You mean there's no way we can get in there?!" Ashley demands.

 _"None that I can see," Joker answers, "EDI?"_

"Any attempts to hack systems that well fortified would take too much time," the AI explains, "It would be detected and the alarms would be set off automatically. We have no accessible entry point."

Shepard stands at her locker, thinking this over… "…maybe we don't need one." Instead of pulling out her assault rifle, she hits a trick panel I didn't even know existed. Once it opens, she pulls out the contents.

A bow and a quiver of arrows.

She smirks as she snaps the retractable bow open. "Just give me a clear shot."


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21 – Shepard

Once we're in the lower atmosphere and closing in on the facility, EDI opens the shuttle bay doors. The wind speed is the first thing I'm aware of. It's gotta be at least 200 kph. I simply hold onto the side of the shuttle bay as I shuffle my feet just enough down the ramp to get a clean shot. I practically hear Garrus wincing inside, but I tell myself I know what I'm doing. _At least I'm pretty sure I do._

My hand is tight around my bow, almost as if I'm clinging to it for dear life. Really, my only concern is losing my grip on it and dropping it out the open doors to the ground below. _Right, 'cause I'm not the least bit worried about losing my footing and sliding down to the edge and dropping 500 feet to my death. Nothing like_ that's _ever happened before._ No. I shake it off. Now's not the time to be thinking about that. Besides, Garrus pulled me back before I could fall last time. He'll do it again in a heartbeat. He's right behind me. He knows I can do this. I know I can do this. …I can.

Finally, I pull out an arrow, nock it, and draw the bow. I catch sight of my target…I take aim…I breathe deep, steady my hand…

…and I turn sharply to the left and let the arrow fly.

It flies through the air before the wind takes hold of it, sending it in an arc and right to one of the windows of the industrial building the Shadows are hiding out in.

 _Joker checks. "…uh…nice aim, but…it's stuck."_

I simply smirk. "It was supposed to do that." It's then that the five-second warm-up period comes to an end. The sonic arrow fires up and, after three seconds, every window on the floor it reached shatters.

 _"Alright! Nice one, Commander!"_

I take a moment to feel victorious before turning around and heading back to the others, letting the bay doors close behind me. "OK, this is it," I tell everyone, "Ashley, Liara, and I can go through the main passage and open the way into the stronghold itself. Everyone else, keep us covered until we give the signal and we'll breech the side entrance as quiet as we can."

"We aren't worried she might've set up anti- _Normandy_ defenses?" Wrex questions.

"Please," I counter, "Shooting down the whole ship would kill us all in four seconds. That's not her style. She wants to make it slow if she can't do it personally. Or both."

 _"Great," Joker sighs, "This Kendra person sounds like the kind of girl who tore the heads off her dolls."_

"Ken- _driss_. …and…she probably did." With that, I head over to my weapons locker. I have my pistol and SMG ready, but I'm not counting on taking the whole stronghold with two weapons, even with the whole squad right behind me. I start to retract my bow with one hand, my other hand ready to take off the quiver…then I stop…

I look between the assault rifle and my bow for a moment, considering what to do. There's a holster for the bow in my quiver, but the quiver will make my rifle holster inaccessible—I can't take both. Reason dictates I should take the rifle and be done with it. Assault rifle is to Shepard as sniper rifle is to Garrus, after all. But…the bow is _my_ weapon. Holding it now just feels _right_. Plus, for all I know, I'll never get a chance to use it again. And I _really_ want to take it now.

Guess it's pretty appropriate. The Shadows gave me back archery. I should take them down with it.

So I keep my quiver strapped on, loading in as many arrows as it can carry, and then retract my bow and place it in the holster.

"Just couldn't resist, could you?"

I smile at the sound of his voice before turning to look at him. "What would you do if you'd just used a sniper rifle for the first time in 20 years?"

"Point taken," he sighs as he places said rifle in its holster.

I smile to him a second longer before turning to look at the others. Looks like they're mostly ready, just checking their weapons. They're still within earshot and most of them are definitely eavesdropping on some level, but they don't seem to really be watching us.

"Is this the part where you tell me to stay close," Garrus questions as soon as he's also certain the rest of the squad isn't paying attention, "because you love me?"

"No," I answer, "this is the part where I tell you to be careful…and remember what you promised me."

He simply looks at me for a moment. He promised he wouldn't let himself lose control with Kendrys like he did with Orion and Sidonis, that he wouldn't risk his own life to protect me unless there was no other way. Those are probably two of the hardest things I could ask of him. But he understands. So he nods briefly, signaling so.

I find myself simply standing here, looking at him. When I'm satisfied I've looked long enough, I smile to myself at what I know I'm going to do next: "Jack?"

Jack looks over at me curiously.

"…we're going to kiss now."

She gets the message and looks away, somewhere between groaning and scoffing.

Then I move closer to the turian I love and we really do kiss. We don't have much time, so I'm forced to keep it short, but I take as much time as I can, giving him a bright smile as I pull back. Once we're done, I head for the bay doors again. We're about to land and Ash and Liara are already waiting.

Ashley simply smirks at me as I walk up to her. "You two just can't keep your hands off each other, can you?"

"Pick your battles, Lieutenant," I counter.

"Right. Sorry. If there's one person in this galaxy I don't wanna tick off, it's you."

"Glad someone on this team knows when to back off."

"Well, it's just so much fun to 'push your buttons,'" Liara smirks.

I just give her a brief look as the ship comes down and the bay doors open. Then I step out and jump down from the ramp to the ground. "Wait ten seconds and come out after us," I tell the rest of the squad as I lead Ash and Liara to the building. The sonic arrow shattered the windows on the third floor, so we have to get up a little higher. Luckily, there's a ladder nearby. I start up it, letting Liara and Ashley come on behind me.

 _"We are coming out now," Samara reports, "We will attempt to cover your tracks."_

"Good. Joker, go ahead and fall back before they look out a window."

 _"Alright," Joker says over the COMM, "we'll just circle around until you're ready to pull out. Go have fun."_

"Stay close," I tell him as I reach the top of the ladder and step onto the third floor ledge, "We might need to come back sooner than you think."

 _"You? Retreat? Obviously not. Maybe you'll take them all down faster than you planned…"_

I can always count on Joker to build my confidence. And bring out a smirk despite the life-or-death situations we're usually in. "Just wait for the signal."

 _"You got it, Commander."_

I move across the ledge to the nearest window, stepping through. A few quick glances around it confirm it's too quiet to be part of the active stronghold. Guess the base itself is really _under_ the facility. Should've expected that much; the building itself is too small for a home base, so the Shadows would've expanded in concealment, like going underground and settling into the tunnels. "We'll have to head down to the lowest floor and go from there. There should be a heat exchange or something leading to the basement—they're probably holed up down there."

"I see a path down," Ash confirms, stepping over to a stairwell, "Looks clear from here."

"Then let's go." I head down the stairs. They take us straight to the bottom floor. With a clear path forward. This is too easy. There has to be some sort of catch.

The heat exchanges do lead down. Right to what was once a storage area that now leads to what can only be the Shadows' enclave. Eventually, we come to our target. The entrance passages all lead directly to this point. The only access to the stronghold itself comes in the form of a broken hallway guarded by a locked gate. Through the gate, we can see the chasm on the other side, on the other end of which are the halls leading to the Shadows' newest headquarters. Looks like a bridge is automatically deployed when the gate opens. As we come up to the gate and check the lock—

Oh no. "Uh…this isn't good."

 _"What?" Garrus instantly comes over my COMM, "What happened?"_

"There's a biometric lock on the gate and it's synched directly to the alarms. Even if we could hack it, trying to get into the system without an authorized access code would trigger every defense they have."

"Let me see it," Liara takes the front, looking over both the gate and the lock itself, "…we might be able to…no…EDI, could you break through without triggering the alarms?"

 _"Not without direct access—connecting to any system besides the central console would require too many relays, leaving very little margin for error."_

I quickly start looking for another way. _Come on, Sara, you snuck into places like this all the time when you were nine years old and no one ever caught you. There's gotta be a way…_ Alright. There's only ever four ways when it comes to crossing obstacles: over, under, around, or through. Through is no longer an option, the walls prevent around, and the chasm makes under a huge dilemma. That just leaves over. I quickly look up. Yes! The pipe system in this building is fairly primitive, so the gate doesn't reach the ceiling thanks to the opening letting the pipes and vents go past. If I can climb up there, I can use the pipes or the vent shaft to get across to the security checkpoint and let the others through. So, not giving myself time for second thoughts, I move to the wall and start climbing up it as best I can.

"…and even if we could hack the gate, there's no guarantee the bridge would deploy," Liara is saying, "so we couldn't cross this chasm I'm guessing was left by the Reapers' occupation. Shepard, what—" That must be the point at which she turns and notices I'm no longer standing right next to her. I'm already planting my feet on the top of the gate. "Shepard! What are you doing?!"

"Getting across to the control panel," I tell her, "The path out is never as guarded as the path in, so it should be possible to hack through the gate from there without tripping the alarms." I check my options. There's about a 30- to 50-foot drop into the sewers from here—hard to tell—and the only ways to cross the distance between floors are the vent shaft, the water pipe, and the gas pipe. Touching the gas pipe instantly dismisses that one—it's too hot to hold to. The vent shaft is too small for me to squeeze in (maybe if I still was nine years old…). Guess I'm going to have to shimmy across the water pipe the whole way there. _Great._ Still, I grab onto it, throw my legs up around it, and start moving.

 _"I'm sorry,_ how _did you say you were getting on the other side of the gate?" Jacob cuts in._

"Uh, Shepard?" Ashley calls straight to me, dismissing Jacob entirely, "That's a water pipe you're climbing on!"

"Yes, I'm aware of that!" I snap back as I start shimmying along the pipe I'm clinging to, "Thank you!"

 _"Wait, WHAT?!" Garrus half-panics, "Sara, I know you've done some crazy things in the past, but don't you think there should be a line?!"_

"Would you rather I wait at the entrance for a Shadow to come along so I can ask them to unlock it for us?"

 _"Shepard, there is a time and place for sarcasm and this is not it!"_

"I know what I'm doing! Just—" Then I cross over the bolts keeping one section of the pipe to the next. And find out the bolts here aren't as tight as the others. When I feel the pipe shifting, I reach to grab onto the next section and jump forward as fast as I can.

Which is not fast enough.

The pipe breaks apart, letting a stream of water free as the section I'm clinging to drops to an angle. The pipe itself stays together and still supports my weight, but the drop causes my legs to lose their hold. I quickly tighten my arms' grasp on the pipe and hold to it before I end up falling, but the way the rest of my body jars back draws an unfortunate yelp from me to accompany the creak of the pipe giving way.

 _"_ Sara _!" Garrus calls all too quickly, "What happened?! Are you OK?!"_

I keep hold of the pipe, but, thanks to my original plan for crossing it, I'm facing the wrong way. _So this is going well._ "I'm fine. Just might take a little longer to get over there than I thought it would."

"Shepard, be careful out there!" Liara calls.

"Yeah, 'cause I was actually considering letting go! I thought that'd be fun!"

Liara just sighs, rolling her eyes. "Garrus was right about the sarcasm, you know."

I growl under my breath before taking a few deep breaths and steadying myself for what I have to do. For a moment, I try kicking my legs back up to grasp the pipe again, but I can't go high enough without risking losing my hold on it otherwise. I'll have to find a way to turn around.

 _"Gotta hand it to you, Shepard," Wrex smirks, "Just when I think you've done the craziest thing ever, you find something else to do."_

I take one more deep breath, cling as tight to the pipe as I can with my left hand, and let go with my right long enough to swing around and take hold on the other side. Panting as the adrenaline thankfully kicks in, I do the same thing to my left so that I'm facing the right direction. Now all I have to do is get across.

 _"Yeah, what was her record before?" Jack banters with him, "Falling through the fish tank? No, wait, killing a Reaper by throwing a thresher maw at it probably trumps everything else."_

"Guys," I finally cut in, "as amusing as these conversations usually are, it's pretty hard to keep my balance with you all talking up my ear."

 _"Alright, we'll keep the COMMs off for a minute," Garrus sighs, "but_ we're coming over there _."_

Well, there's obviously no one behind us and they'd have to come through anyway. "…fine. I'll have the gate open by the time you catch up." Once I've said so and heard my COMM click off, I look at the pipe. There's only one way I'm traversing it now. I'm going to have to… _…focus, Shepard, you've done this before._

 _Yeah, I have. I was six years old and I came across an abandoned playground. The equipment itself was in reasonably working order, so I spent the whole day—the best day I had that year—playing through it all. Jumping onto the swings, going down the slides…_

… _and crossing the monkey bars to somersault down._

Same thing. Just have to cross.

I keep my eyes forward, focus on one move at a time. One hand over the other, one push closer. Every time I get the subconscious urge to look down, I drive it back. I'd like to think my mental discipline is halfway decent, which means I'm strong enough to fight off the impulse—every time it comes, I think back to just an hour ago in my cabin. _I can't fail now. I gave Garrus a promise._ So I keep moving. Finally, I come to the end of the pipe. I'm still about three feet back from the ledge I'm trying to reach, not to mention nine feet over it. _Time to flip for it._ I swing my legs back a few times and then let go of the pipe as I fling myself forward. I hit the floor in a roll. _She sticks the landing!_

Smiling ecstatically as I get back on my feet, I turn to locate the control panel I came for. When I see it to my left, I make my way over to it and navigate my way to the gate controls. Once I've found them, I activate them. Then I take great pleasure in the way the security gate slides open and the bridge over the chasm I just crossed stretches out to the others right as my remaining squad-mates catch up to Ash and Liara. "Told you."

"Oh, we never doubted your capability," Jacob points out as they start across the bridge, "Just your sanity."

Garrus crosses last. As he does, he looks to the right. Watching the water falling from the offset pipe overhead. Before he turns his attention back to crossing the bridge, he looks over at me, silently telling me _You scared me. Don't let this happen again._

I simply return the glance, discreetly giving a slight nod to say _I won't._ "Come on. The side entrance should be down this hall." I start down it, the others following me through. "They'll expect us to storm the front door, so this way gives us the element of surprise and a flanking advantage." I turn the corner, finding the door ten meters away with no one guarding it.

"Sounds like our odds are decent," Garrus says as he leads us running to the door, "Let's get inside before—" He then actually reaches the door and stops dead in his tracks, staring at it. "…uh…"

We all follow his gaze and see the problem. There's no visible locking mechanism to bypass. Except for a bolt in the door with a knotted slot at its center.

"Wait a minute," Ashley steps up, "Is that…?" She groans. "You've gotta be kidding me! The Shadows are actually using a tumbler lock on the side entrance to their HQ?! I thought everyone on Earth got rid of those 40 years ago!"

"WHAT?!" Tali demands, "You mean we can't get in?!"

"Uh, actually—" I start.

"Not unless we've got a key," Ashley sighs, "Which I'm betting only Kendrys and her goons have copies of."

"But we could—"

"Couldn't we just break it open?" James suggests.

"It—" I finally give up and get on with it, rolling my eyes in exasperation, pulling an arrow from my quiver, and snapping the shaft in half.

"Not without setting off every alarm in the building," Miranda dismisses James' idea.

"I might be able to use a holo system in my omni-tool to simulate the key," EDI suggests.

"I doubt that would work either. The tumblers need real pressure, not synthetically generated."

Grunt growls. "Just break down the wall next to it!"

"Right," Liara comments, "Because I'm sure doing so would be more effective than breaking down the _door._ "

"Well, we have to think of something!" Garrus says, "We can't just wait here and—!" He then turns just the right way to see me kneeling by the door with a bent and broken arrow wedged into the keyhole. "…uh…Sara…what are you doing?"

"One of the first skills I ever learned…" I answer. Then my work comes through and the lock clicks open. "…picking the lock." With that, I toss the broken arrow aside, get back on my feet, and carefully push the door open. When no alarms sound, I toss the others a smug look and head through.

I notice a distinct two-second hesitation before they follow me.

As we stick to the shadows and check to make sure the coast is clear, I pull out my bow and snap it open. "Looks like they're not patrolling this sector right now. If we hurry, we might be able to cross the hall before—" I stop moving when I hear a clicking sound that's regrettably familiar. "…please don't tell me someone just stepped on one of those pressure plates."

"Eh…" James hesitates, "…OK…I won't tell you."

I don't even have time to turn to glare at him before I hear Shadows approaching. "Well, there goes that plan. Weapons free." I jump behind the nearest cover and pull out an arrow, hearing the gunshots start immediately after I put it in position. I stay behind cover for the first part of the fight, peering around every five seconds to send an arrow at the first Shadow I catch sight of. There's not many of them, thankfully, so once the squad has worn them down sufficiently, I send out a yellow-fletched arrow—it catches one of the last Shadows standing with an electric blast, sending similarly charged shrapnel shards at the others to take them all out in a chain reaction like arc lightning.

Tali sighs as the fight dies down. "I'm sorry, Shepard, but it's kind of hard to picture you with these guys."

Suddenly, some of the stealth experts make their move, dropping from the vents to the catwalks or jumping from the shadows behind us. Wrex and Grunt make quick work of a few of the close-range attackers, leaving the others for the biotics of the squad. Garrus and Ash manage to take out the snipers before they can take any shots at us (well, any that catch us with our shields down, at least), but one of the Shadows on the catwalks is specializing in the bladed weapons and starts tossing knives. When one of the knives starts flying in our direction, I duck out of the way and then snatch it from midair and toss it back with all the strength I have. It flies right through the assassin's neck with enough strength to drop them from the catwalk to the floor.

Tali looks at this in astonishment… "Never mind."

I give her a brief smirk before turning to EDI. "Can you hack their systems now?"

"No," EDI answers, "I still need a direct link."

"And I don't suppose anyone knows which direction we're supposed to go."

"Well, experience suggests we follow the trail of people trying to kill us," Garrus remarks, "but, clearly, that's not gonna help when they're coming from all directions."

I groan. "I was really hoping we wouldn't have to do this… We're splitting up again. We have three paths forward, we'll have to send four of us through each one."

"You should probably check your math," Jack points out, "There's 13 of us."

"I meant on this level." I retract my bow and put it away, stepping over to the path up to the catwalks. "The vents are always a shortcut. If I can cut straight through, I can signal you over the COMMs and we'll all know exactly where to go; if one of you reaches it first, I can catch up that much faster."

"What—Sara, we just went over this!" Garrus snaps even as I start heading up.

"Yes, but _this_ I actually have experience with, leaving you all no reason to be worried."

"You've crawled through vents on a regular basis?"

"At the time, I just called it Tuesday."

"They'll hear you coming," Grunt argues.

I just give him a short look as I reach the vent. "Me? I doubt that." Before they can keep trying to talk me out of it, I move in. Thankfully, the vents inside the buildings are bigger than the old-fashioned design I saw over the chasm, so I actually fit inside with enough room to maneuver forward. I crawl straight until I come to a fork in the road, then I move in whichever direction I hear noise. Two halls later, I reach the source of one such clamor: three Shadows moving towards the entry hall. I quickly pull out my pistol and fire it through the grate, taking all of them out with three consecutive headshots. When no one responds, I figure the hall is clear and holster my gun with a triumphant smile. "And I repeat: told you."

 _"What did you do now?" Samara questions._

"Took out a patrol group moving to blindside you. Never saw me coming."

 _"Well then, perhaps traversing the vents was a better idea than it seemed."_

I just keep moving forward. But two seconds later, I stop. I hear something. A beeping sound, the origin of which I can't identify.

 _"Where's that noise coming from?" Wrex asks._

 _"Not our end," Miranda answers, "as far as I can tell."_

Something's not right. "Guys, turn off your COMMs for five seconds." I turn my own off. I can still hear the beeping. It's coming from somewhere near _me_. Curiously, I start to go back towards the grate and peer through, see if I can locate the source and determine whether or not it's a problem.

Halfway there, I realize it is. The incessant noise is accompanied by another, more rapid beeping. About a quarter of a second later, I see what happened: the patrol group I just took out is rigged with the heart monitors we encountered on Noveria. Another quarter second later, I realize what the second beeping is: a proximity mine planted on the ceiling below me. The resulting explosion causes it to give way, dropping me to the floor underneath.

Ow.

My COMM is still off and my bow just fell out of its holster. Before I can even recover from the fall, someone kicks the retracted bow aside. I turn to look at them.

It's Irana.

I instantly reach for my gun.

She steps down on my hand first. Not hard enough to hurt it, but enough to make sure I can't move it. "Nice try. Just not good enough."

"Says the spy who gave herself away."

Irana growls before grabbing me by the arm and throwing me against the wall. I don't get the chance to try reaching for my gun again before she pins me there. "We didn't get to finish on Aephus. As much as I'd love to have a rematch, Kendrys will want this for herself."

"She's been going to an awful lot of trouble just to kill me," I point out as I unfortunately discover I can't break her hold.

"You still don't get it, do you? This isn't about you."

I look at her in confusion for a second before she starts leading me off. I could easily break the hold now that we're moving, but I know what'll happen if I don't: Kendrys will have me cornered right as the squad realizes what happened and comes up behind me, giving them a clear shot at her and me a chance to duck out while the Shadows are in sheer panic. Besides, my mind is pretty preoccupied with trying to figure out what Irana meant when she…said…

 _"This isn't about you."_

…not me…this is about Orion.

And I'm not the one that killed him.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22 – Garrus

I'll admit, I'm not actually worried about Shepard when she ducks into the vents. She's right, this is how she survived for 15 years. And even if she does get into trouble, she can definitely handle herself. The fact that she takes out three Shadows less than two minutes later proves that.

Three groups of four seems pretty easy to settle. In silent agreement, we fall into the groupings we used on Korlus. So I go straight through the hall at the center of the room and take Tali, Ashley, and EDI with me. I hear it some distance ahead of us when Shepard's shots go off and feel a small spark of something akin to pride when she explains over the COMM what it was. But when the beeping starts, I stop moving.

 _"Where's that noise coming from?" Wrex asks._

 _"Not our end," Miranda answers, "as far as I can tell."_

I look around briefly, seeing if I can find something that might be acting as a source of the noise, but I can't tell with the way my COMM is echoing.

 _"Guys, turn off your COMMs for five seconds," Shepard finally instructs._

I follow through. The beeping stops. It's not coming from here. When Tali, Ashley, and EDI confirm they don't hear it either (EDI's confirmation cementing it), I turn my COMM back on. "We're clear on this end."

 _"Here, too," Liara agrees._

 _"And here," Miranda adds._

I'm about to start moving again when I realize there's a fourth response that isn't coming. One that clearly was the source of the disturbance. When three more seconds pass by in silence, _that's_ when I start worrying. "Shepard? Shepard, can you hear me?!"

"Her COMM is still disabled," EDI reports, "I cannot track it."

"Where was it when she turned it off?!"

"This way." EDI leads the way forward, taking us off course without question. I'd probably be surprised if I wasn't focused on wondering what could be happening that would prevent Shepard from turning her COMM back on. After a left turn and a short run, EDI starts to take a right. "Her last signal originated from this…uh oh."

"What?!" I start down the hall. After five steps, I stop. The hall itself is clear. But I just stepped on something. And I have a pretty good idea what it is. Knowing that, though, I lose the nerve to look down and see. Still, somehow, I end up doing it.

It's Shepard's bow.

I can't bring myself to move, so Ashley steps ahead of me and picks it up. "Oh, boy…"

Shepard's bow… She wouldn't let that out of her sight. Something's definitely wrong.

"Uh…" Tali speaks up hesitantly, "…Garrus…"

I look over at her. She's staring up at something. I follow her gaze and see the problem. Something blew a hole in the ceiling about five feet from a grate in the ventilation system. I quickly turn my gaze down, trying to convince myself to stop worrying ( _There's no body, so it wasn't fatal—the fall must've been what made her drop her bow_ ). And it's a good thing I do, because I catch sight of something on the floor. I step over and inspect the metallic remains of something very familiar. So familiar because I use it myself. A turian proximity mine. "Irana found her."

"OK," Ashley reasons, "she's not stupid, she would've left a trail for us to follow."

Knowing that to be true, I start looking. I can't see anything. But that doesn't mean EDI can't. "EDI?"

EDI searches the area. "There. I can read the remains of thermal radiation along the path she took." She starts moving forward.

I quickly follow her, Ash and Tali right behind me as I turn on my COMM. "Converge on our signal. We can't move forward until we get Shepard out."

EDI keeps moving, her eyes on the floor the whole way. For a while, she barely turns. But once we reach a main hall, branching in a few directions, she stops.

"What is it?" I ask almost immediately, "Why are we stopping?"

"A large number of Shadows have gone this way. I cannot single out which readings belong to Shepard."

For a moment, I start pacing, wondering what to do. Then I hear gunshots going off around us. I quickly reach to draw my rifle, prepared for an ambush.

Then one of the Shadows is sent flying into the wall across from one of the branches in the hallway. Grunt steps out after it, letting off his signature laugh as he puts his shotgun away. "Works every time."

"Well, I'm glad you're having fun, but Shepard's in trouble and we don't know where to find her!"

"Not that way," Liara reports as she steps into the hall, "There were a few Shadows headed this way, though. As you can see."

"Same for us," Miranda adds as she comes up to us, "All clear now."

"These tunnels are like the mines on Omega," I groan under my breath, "Worse, considering how the maze we went through last time didn't have halls branching in so many directions as opposed to rooms full of Shadows waiting to attack us." Two seconds after I say so, something occurs to me. "Wait. Those Shadows you ran into were all coming _this exact_ direction?"

"Exactly," Liara nods.

"There were plenty of alternate paths. If each assassin was guarding a different room, they could've taken shorter routes, but they all went towards this exact point. One of these halls leads to a section of the tunnels the others don't—they must all be headed to where Irana is."

"That would be this way, then," EDI says, gesturing to the largest opening in the hall, "All of the other branches circle around in some way, but this one heads forward."

"Great," Jack sighs, "Just one problem: which way down it?"

I look for myself. The hall itself heads directly to another area of the tunnels, closer to the center of the stronghold itself by the look of it, but there's also a metal staircase alongside it, headed up a sublevel above it. Once again, Ash's words ring through my mind: _She would've left a trail for us to follow._ I move closer, searching the area for myself. I can't see any difference other than destination. I look down, checking the floor and the area around the last few steps of the stairwell. That's where I find it. One of her arrows is under the bottom step. I lean over to pick it up and know for certain. "Up the stairs. Hurry!" I head up, the others following directly behind me.

At the top of the stairs is a door. I rush through it, prepared to pull out my rifle and start firing. But when we get through, there's no one there. For a second, I'm confused. Then I hear the clamor, one that can only be caused by a hundred or so assassins scrambling into the same room, and turn to face it. There are about ten assassins at the ledge of the balcony we're on, looking over at the madness below. Shepard is down _there_.

She sent us up the stairs to give us a chance at sneaking in behind them and attacking from above. She really is brilliant.

I signal to the others what to do and sneak up behind the few Shadows standing watch. When I give the signal, most of us take one, pull them back, and take them out silently. The balcony's clear. The advantage is all ours.

I look over the ledge and I instantly see Shepard. Irana pushes her into the center of what seems like a gathering hall, at least three dozen Shadows surrounding them. Without her bow, those arrows are all but useless, and the two guns she has with her couldn't do enough damage to get her out of trouble before the Shadows took her down hard. I've gotta do something. But even if we open fire, there's too many Shadows in the area to clear in time. We need a—

…then I look down at the arrow in my hand. I remember how Shepard said she rigged her arrows and matched the "fletching" to each specialization. This one is blue. When I remember what she said that meant, I feel a plan rising. _Alright, how did she say we activate these things?_ Right. Method #1: if an adversary picks it up, they'll put pressure on the shaft and cause it to go off automatically. I can't think of any way to get that to work for us, though, so… Method #2: if it's launched, the sudden stop of impact will trigger it; the incendiary and cryo arrows take immediate effect but the arrows like this one have a five-second warning period to avoid friendly fire.

We have to find some way to launch the arrow. _Now_.

"We've got eyes on all of them," James says, "Say the word and we can line up a shot at Irana right here, right now, and get Kendrys the second she shows up."

"No," I quickly stop him, "the other Shadows will open fire, Shepard will get hit." I hold up the arrow. "I think we can use this, but we have to…" Then my gaze drifts back and I see Ash holding Shepard's bow. "… _Ashley_ … "

Ashley looks between me and the bow curiously for a second before realizing what my plan is. "…oh no!"

"You said you could shoot anything!"

"Not this!"

"Just try it! This might be our only chance!"

Ashley groans before carefully taking the arrow. "Alright. If Shepard can do it, right?" She steps up to the ledge and holds it up. "…just have to…uh…" She looks at the arrow and the bow for a second. After a second of watching her, I realize in pure exasperation that she's actually trying to figure out which one goes in which hand.

"Come on, you've seen her do it!"

"Well, I wasn't expecting to have to copy her, so I wasn't paying attention!"

I finally growl and take it. "Let me try. It can't be that big a difference." I actually have watched Shepard when she'd do this. _I couldn't help it._ The bow goes in the off hand, the arrow goes in the dominant. I have it in position, I just have to pull it—uh…pull the string back… After a few seconds of attempting, I realize why turians were never considered famous archers—three talons instead of five fingers makes it a bit more difficult. I also realize that Shepard's enhanced strength has actually been playing a part in her aim this whole time because the string is really tight. "…OK, I stand corrected, this is harder than it looks."

"Here, let me…" James then steps over and starts trying to pull the string back. "Whoa. How does Shepard do this every three seconds?!"

"Just pull it, I'll hold it steady."

"Then how are we supposed to aim it?"

"Are you gonna pull or not?!"

"What do you think I'm trying to do?!" James finally resorts to pressing down on the bow with his boot to get the string to bend.

I instantly push him off, not caring when he stumbles back. "Well, don't break it! Shepard would kill us!"

"Would you two be quiet?!" Miranda hisses, "They'll hear you!"

I groan, letting the bow down. "Alright, let me think this over." I lean against the ledge, considering our options. I don't let the bow or the arrow out of my right hand's grasp, my left hand against the ledge as I look down at Shepard.

She's still cornered and she knows it. But that doesn't keep her from standing straight as ever and turning to glare at Irana. "Nice party. I appreciate the invite." Leave it to Sara Shepard to wax sarcastic in the face of certain death.

"Glad you think so," Irana remarks as the Shadows get on the defensive, "It's the last one you'll ever see."

"I don't know. Even if I did die, I'd expect a pretty big one in the afterlife. I did cut it close before. Twice."

"Third time's the charm," a new voice cuts through the hall.

…I know that voice. I look over the ledge and out towards the end of the hall. There's a balcony at the end over the entrance to the next section of the tunnels.

"The great Commander Shepard, caught like a rat in a trap," the voice continues as its owner steps out, their hand running along the railing around the balcony as they approach the center of it, "Can you appreciate the irony?" It's a human female with dark hair. There's not a doubt in my mind that this is Kendrys Falcon.

Shepard just sneers at her. I can tell from here that just looking at the head assassin is making her steam up again. "Not really. Never was a fan."

Kendrys just delivers a wry smirk before jumping down to her level and stepping up to the front.

Before she gets that far, I feel something pressed sharply against my hand, so tight it almost painfully carves through my glove into my flesh. I look down to see what it is and find that I'm clutching Shepard's bow about five times tighter than I was ten seconds ago. I quickly force myself to stop before I damage it or accidentally set off the arrow. _Well, at least that kept me from losing it just at the sight of that—no! No, don't even go there. That's just gonna make it worse._ I focus on the scene below, careful not to let my thoughts drift off again. I can't take that kind of risk. Not now.

"You haven't changed much since I saw you last," Kendrys comments as she steps up to Shepard, "Other than getting your memories back, I mean."

"Upset, are you?" Shepard counters.

"Given when happened because of it, yeah. You could say that."

"Easily rectified now that you're here," Irana points out.

"Ahead of schedule, though, the way I understand it," Shepard says, "Spies are supposed to keep the enemy from gaining ground and inform their boss otherwise. You're not very good at it, are you?"

"And yet," Kendrys sneers, "you'll notice that when the Orpheus Protocol was active, Irana here was the only one who actually succeeded at her job!"

"And the only one who made it out alive," Shepard remarks.

"You're not in a position to be antagonizing me!" Kendrys snaps back, pulling her gun and taking aim.

Shepard takes a step back, holding her hands up away from her guns. "Even if I was, you wouldn't pull that trigger. Face it. I know you as much as you know me."

Kendrys scoffs, lowering the gun. "I doubt that." She turns around, holstering her gun as she starts her monologue. Shepard doesn't move, not with Irana and every other Shadow in the immediate vicinity still keeping her in their sights.

This might be the last chance we get. We have to take the shot now. We need to find some way to…to…

I turn back to the others. "Forget the bow." I retract it and hold the arrow out. "…Liara?"

Liara looks at it for a second before catching on. She nods and carefully takes the arrow into a biotic field, raising it from my hand. "Just say when."

I look back over the ledge, watch the scene unfold the way only a sniper can. Shepard's not moving at all now. She knows to expect what's coming, she's waiting for us to make a move. Irana isn't shifting her sights at all, none of the Shadows are. The only variable is Kendrys. She's not leaving range, but she needs to be at the focal point if this is going to work. Just have to wait for her to come back to the front. She steps to the back, looking down at the floor. Wait… She stops walking and slowly turns to face Shepard again. _Wait_ … She slowly—painfully slowly—starts to walk back over to her, like a predator closing in on prey ( _Great. Now I wanna kill her again._ ). WAIT…! Then she steps into the line of fire, stopping about two meters from Shepard.

" _Now_ ," I give the signal.

And Liara takes the shot.

The arrow flies down to the Shadows and impacts with the ground not far from Kendrys' feet. She looks down and curiously picks it up, making some remark to Shepard that I can't hear from here. But I can plainly see the way Shepard smirks, the gleam in her eyes almost scary, and lifts her hands even higher…pressing them tight to her ears. There's only enough time for us to catch on and do the same before the arrow activates, releasing a sonic wave that sends the Shadows to their knees.

There've been a few times I've regretted that turian senses are sharper than humans'. This, however, is the first time that the so-called advantage is actually the least bit painful. Even with my ears covered, the frequency hits hard. Not so hard, though, that I can't stay upright and watch as Shepard makes her escape, rushing past the debilitated Shadows to the tunnels Kendrys made her entrance from. I follow her direction, getting out of range of the sonic attack and leading the rest of the squad through the nearest passage to the next section of the tunnels.

 _"Break it up!" Shepard's voice comes through the COMM as soon as we're clear, "They'll track us if we don't!"_

Though we still head to the same point, we all branch off in different directions. Right before I start moving again, I hear the sonic attack dying down. Kendrys must've managed to fight it off long enough to break the arrow. She's probably sending the Shadows after us right now. We need to put them off-balance and then get out of their sights again.

I keep to the upper level, moving as fast as I can to reach the end of the hall. The meeting point we're all headed for isn't going to be tagged until Shepard reaches it, so all I can do until she gets there is do my part to throw off our pursuers and give the rest of the squad covering fire. Of course, when I reach for my sniper rifle, I realize I'm still holding Shepard's bow. Even though it's retracted now, I have nowhere to put it. And there's no way in the galaxy— _no way in the universe_ —I'm putting it down until I can give it back to her. Looks like I won't be much help with the covering fire. I'll just have to stay out of sight.

From what I can hear, the sonic attack threw the Shadows off so completely that they didn't even see which way we went. Less than half of them seem to actually be coming this way. Good. Knowing this must get Shepard to move faster, because it's less than three seconds after I make the realization that she sends out the NavPoint. I rush to it, finding us all converging on it right as she gets there.

"This is a training room," Shepard explains as we come in, "We can cut through here to get closer to the operations center. Kendrys will probably hole up there if we—"

That's when one of the Shadows drops in from the vents. "You're not going anywhere."

"Garrus!" Shepard calls across to me, "Toss it!"

I don't even consider what could go wrong before I throw her bow to her.

…and the Shadow between us catches it. "Nice try."

Shepard just looks at the assassin. That same threatening smirk alight in her eyes.

Before the Shadow can realize what that means, her bow lights up and starts beeping. Less than a second later, it gives off a powerful electric shock. The Shadow seizes up in pain, muscles contracting around the bow and only serving to enhance the voltage. When the current stops flowing, the Shadow drops to the ground, unconscious if not completely electrocuted.

Shepard then smiles and simply steps over to retrieve her bow.

"You really did take their idea?" I smirk back as I come down to the main level again.

"And tweaked it. I am loving this bow, I gotta start taking it everywhere."

"You're not leaving this room."

At the sound of that voice, we all draw our weapons and face it.

Irana stands at the back entrance, glaring viciously as she holds out her gun. "Suddenly, I don't care what Kendrys wants. I say kill you all now and be done with it."

"Feel free to try," Shepard counters, drawing her bow, "traitor!"

"Oh! No, see, for me to have betrayed you, I'd have to have actually been on your side at some point."

"Details." Then she lets her arrow fly.

Irana dives out of the way, causing the resulting concussive blast to hit the wall behind her as she opens fire.

The biotics hold up barriers while the rest of us jump out of her line of fire. When she attempts to reload, Samara and Jack throw out their barriers at her, sending her flying back into wall. She hits it so hard that she drops her gun to the floor. Before she can move to retrieve it, Shepard gets the jump on her. Irana counters her attack, preventing her from just shooting, but that still leaves her an opening to grab an arrow and prepare to drive it through. Irana, unfortunately, counters that, too, grabbing her by the wrist and twisting until she drops the arrow. I don't get the chance to respond before Shepard hooks her leg around Irana's and twists around, taking her by the neck as they turn and throwing her against the wall as hard as her strength allows. That certainly looks painful.

Irana kicks back, pushing Shepard out of reach. That, however, leaves her open to fire from most of the rest of us. Her shields manage to catch at least half the bullets, demonstrating why Shepard opted for a straight-up assault instead of just shooting her from a distance, but Jack makes a move the second her shields are down, throwing her across the room. If she'd hit hard enough to get knocked unconscious, that'd be the perfect move; considering it doesn't, though, and drops her right next to the next available weapon, I take a second to toss a glare in Jack's general direction (and make a mental note to have a talk with her about her aim once we're out of here) before ducking for cover.

While I'm behind cover, I pull my sniper rifle back out and ready to fire. If I can get one clean shot while she's focused on the others, I can end this now. So I wait for the right moment. That moment comes when Shepard sees what I'm planning and fires a cryo arrow in Irana's direction. Sounds like it makes contact, because the gunshots on that side stop for a moment. I take the opportunity to aim at her. But the second I have her in my sights, she pulls the arrow out and delivers a counterstrike straight at me—she overloads my shields, sending a chain reaction across to the others in the process. I'd be lying if I said we didn't all take some damage from that hit. And, worst of all, it throws us all off-balance long enough for Irana to line up a shot. I don't know at who (I hit the floor and dropped my gun when I took that hit, I can't see the rest of the squad), but I know she won't hesitate to take it.

Before Irana can fire, though, an all-too-familiar beeping noise echoes through the chamber. A grenade just rolled up to her, undoubtedly dropped by James. She only has enough time to vault around the weapons cabinet she pulled the gun from before it goes off, throwing her forward. That at least gives the others a chance to recover and get her back under fire, but she's good at this. I can't say if she'll outlast us or not, but she will keep outmaneuvering us until the fight's over. We need to find some way to at least wear her down, slow her movements even, keep her from—

That's when my gaze turns enough to the side to see something on the floor. The arrow Shepard dropped when Irana countered her forward attack. When I see what type it is, I know what I have to do.

I keep behind cover for a moment. I can't get a clear shot at Irana the way she's moving around the room, looking for a chance to take at least one of us out of the equation, and leaving cover now with the way bullets are flying could be unhealthy if my shields aren't working. I have to wait for Irana's attack to die down before I can make a move. So, instead, I retrieve my gun and wait it out, watching from here as she ducks under Shepard's arrows, dodges Wrex and Grunt's charges, shoots at the rest of the squad before their shields can recharge. Just when I'm about to get worried about our odds and dive back in against my better judgment, my shields come back up. I quickly roll away from my cover, coming to the corner.

The squad has her surrounded for the moment. That'd be a good thing if she didn't have access to mines that could seriously injure anyone too close to her with no shields active. I have to take the shot now. I quickly signal to the others to get out of the way. They get the message, breaking the line of fire and leaving Irana both exposed and free to move. Time to take advantage of the former and make sure this fight ends. So I toss Shepard's discarded arrow at her.

It hits her in the abdomen. She gasps harshly as she stumbles back, but then she simply yanks out the shaft and growls. "Leave the arrows to your girlfriend. At least she knows how to aim them."

But I don't respond. I simply keep my gaze on her and wait.

"What, no snarky remark? You…you just…" That's when she starts to realize something's wrong. She's losing her balance, struggling to even stay on her feet. Every second makes her weaker, makes it harder for her to keep breathing. Finally, her gaze falls to the blood-tipped arrow she's grasping in her shaking hand.

The fletching is green. It's poisoned. And now, so is she.

"Consider that payback," I growl.

She doesn't respond before she drops the arrow entirely and falls to the floor. Looks like her systems are already starting to shut down. She won't last much longer.

"Which way?" Samara cuts through the silence I didn't realize had fallen on us.

Shepard takes a second too long to register that the question was even posed before answering. "Uh…the operations center should be closer to the water lines, at the back of the tunnel system. There should be a path down if we go this way." She gestures which way to go before retracting her bow and turning that way.

But as the others start to clear out, I look over at Irana.

She lies on the ground, writhing in agony, too weak to stand. I know from experience what poison can do to you. I remember the days— _weeks_ —of pain and weakness and… No. As much as I might want to, I can't put anyone else through that.

So I draw my gun, step over to her, and shoot her in the head. Her misery ends there. Only once she's stopped moving do I holster my rifle and start back to the others.

Grunt just shakes his head. "Waste of ammo."

Shepard, on the other hand, looks at me for a second before giving me a small approving smile. One that tells me she probably couldn't have done it herself. "Come on. Kendrys knows we're here now. She's getting ready for us every second we wait." With that, she steps through the door to the next passage, letting the rest of us follow behind. I'm the first to follow, so she uses the time in which the others catch up with us to take hold of my hand for just a moment. Before she lets go, I return the gesture, clutching her as tight as I dare to. Even despite how fast she pulls away when she gets moving again, she still seems to let the contact remain as long as we can possibly keep it. I still feel her fingers running lightly over my palm as I follow her through the tunnels.

Fleetingly, though, I glance back at the training room. Irana's gone now. That's kind of hard to believe. I mean, we only knew her for a few days, but it was a rough few days. And after what she put us through, how close she came to really hurting us… Now one of the last leading Shadows is out of the picture. One of the other two is clearly not coming.

All that's left is Kendrys. Time to see to it she never leaves these tunnels alive.


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23 – Shepard

"Keep your eyes on everything," I told them, "Expect the unexpected." Good advice for any situation, I suppose, but most appropriate now. The Shadows are stealth experts, recently effective in employing traps—anything less than complete vigilance will likely get one of us killed before we even get to Kendrys. I still maintain a reasonable pace as I lead the squad through the tunnels, following the layout to the central construct that'll take us to the operations center, but I watch my every step, carefully cast my eyes at every inch of the walls to make sure nothing gets past me unnoticed. My weapons are holstered for the moment, so I keep my hands close to my hips, ready to grab one of my guns or reach for an arrow the second I catch sight of danger. So far, we haven't run into anything since Garrus took down Irana. Considering one of the Shadows found us immediately before she did, I'd say at least a few of them must have _some_ idea where we are, so the idea that no one's come at us in the past five minutes is a bit unsettling.

As if in response to that thought, I hear someone jump out behind us and Ashley call to watch our six. Before the others even get a chance to open fire, I turn around and, in one swift move, pull out my bow, snap it open, nock an arrow, draw it back, take aim, and fire. The arrow flies between the rest of the squad and back into the Shadow behind us, hitting them a split second before they can fire their weapon.

James watches in amazement as the body drops before turning to smirk at me. " _Ay_ , Lola, you should've gotten one of those things years ago."

I just shrug. "Harder to keep ammo stocked for a bow than a gun. Besides, I was out of practice." _That and I didn't feel like revisiting the days on Earth when "this thing" was necessary._

"Well, if this is what you're like when you're rusty…"

"If I were you, Lieutenant, I'd be very careful how I finished that sentence."

"Ooh, we're calling rank now," he keeps up even as I turn my back, rolling my eyes, "Getting defensive, Commander?"

That's when I stop moving. "Shut up."

"What, did I actually strike a nerve that time?"

"No, I'm serious! Be quiet!" The others catch the message and stop moving, staying as close to silent as we can reach. There is definitely a noise echoing through the tunnels. Looks like the Shadows are getting ready for us. Moving slower now, I carefully pull an arrow out and draw my bow, though I keep it lowered until I have a target to aim at. I hear the others following my lead, making sure their guns are loaded as we cautiously move forward.

With every step, the noise becomes clearer. It's definitely someone talking, probably one of the Shadows talking to a whole contingent of guards. _Still never easy._ Keeping my bow at the ready, I survey the area. The Shadows are definitely in the clearing ahead, our only path down to the lower sections of the tunnels that Kendrys is undoubtedly hiding away in. If we keep heading down the main hall, we'll walk right into them. As I come up to the turn we'll have to take, I press myself against the wall and peer around the corner. No cover, limited range of motion, right in the line of fire of about 20 assassins with their eyes trained on what they know is the only way we can reach that clearing without backtracking for an hour (and going through half of their other ranks in the process, most likely). We'll never make it if we keep going that way. _There's gotta be another way—there's always another way._

I turn that thought over for a few seconds, looking around the hall as I do so, before I finally turn to the others. "Tell me someone's got another way."

From the look of it, the others are all searching for an alternate route, too, and coming up empty.

All except Miranda, who simply looks up at the ceiling. "…well…we could always use their own tactics against them."

I follow her gaze up and find she's looking at one of the vent shafts. By the look of it, it'll drop us right on top of the Shadows standing guard ahead. Perfect.

"Brilliant," Jack sneers, "Except how are we supposed to get up there?"

Miranda answers by gesturing over to me.

I'm already climbing up the walls. The Shadows may have outfitted this entire tunnel system with the tech worthy of a stronghold, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a tunnel network—climbing these walls might as well be like climbing a rock wall. The wall itself is only about ten feet, so it doesn't take long to reach the shaft itself. Miranda even helpfully takes off the vent cover for me with her biotics, preventing any noise that might give us away. This, however, is the hard part: actually getting into the shaft itself. I reach over, careful not to lose my hold on the wall until I have one on the shaft, and wrap my hand around the edge of the opening, using all the strength I have to keep my grasp on it as I kick off the wall and swing my leg up to the other side. After that, it's just a matter of getting up the next four feet to the crawlspace. I keep my feet pressed to one side of the shaft and my back against the other and start pushing myself upwards. I know the others aren't expecting me to get that far because I can practically feel the anxiety back in the hall as they wait for me to lose my hold and drop back down to them; the one time my glance falls down, I think I see Garrus moving into position at the edge of the shaft so he can jump over to catch me if I actually do fall. I just shake it off. _As much as I've been through, I guess I should expect them to worry too much._ I finally reach the crawlspace and stop moving, instead turning to kick myself up into it. I get into it on the first try and never risk the fall. _Glad to see my luck still hasn't run out._ Taking a second to calm my racing heart, I turn to look down the shaft and back at the others.

Jack just stands there, looking up at me. "Well, that's great for you, Spider-Girl, but how are _we_ supposed to get up there?"

I sigh, rolling my eyes. "You should have more faith in me." Then I reach around, pull out a rope I snatched from the training room just before Garrus took out Irana, and throw it down to them, pinning it in place by running a bladed arrow through my end and into the shaft. "It'll hold you, but I recommend the krogan go last." With that, I turn and start crawling through to the clearing. As I move forward, I hear the others coming in behind me. Once all twelve of them (Wrex, as planned, coming in last) have formed a line behind me, they pull the arrow back, letting the rope fall. Hopefully, no Shadow is going to come by and notice the discarded line and detached vent cover before we reach the clearing.

One minute later, I locate the opening we're looking for. Still no sounds of panic behind us, so I'd say we're clear. As carefully as I can, I pry the cover off the opening and push it aside before stepping out. While the others follow me out, I come out on a balcony and look around. The Shadows are almost directly below us and no one else is in the room. If we can drop down silently behind them, we can take them all out with no problem.

But that's too easy. There must be a catch.

I can't see anything or anyone else in the area and Wrex just came out of the vent and handed me my arrow back, so everyone's waiting on me. _Fine. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it._ I step over the railing around the balcony and then drop down behind the Shadows. Samara and Liara easily follow, moving into position beside me. Once we're close enough, we make a move, taking out one Shadow each. The others start to notice something's wrong, but before they catch sight of us, we've already taken out the next three. By then, the rest of the squad has opened fire from the high ground, taking out the rest of the assassins before they can really attack.

"We'd better hurry," I tell the others as they come down to the main walkway, "We have to get down to the lower stronghold before—" Then a beeping noise echoes through the room.

The Shadows we just took out were a _patrol_ group, not guards. In other words, they had active heartbeat monitors.

"YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!"

Figures that statement is almost immediately followed by a gunshot against my shields. I quickly draw my bow again and send an arrow down the trajectory. It hits the Shadow that fired on me, but there are five more directly behind and another whole squad headed in from the next hall.

"Well, this should be good," Jacob sighs.

Two seconds later, an all-out firefight has broken out. Once Wrex and Grunt have gone off charging in again, I jump right in, taking out any Shadow that gets too close and shooting down all the others in my sights. This also lets me keep pressure off the squad, leaving them free to keep the pressure _on_ the Shadows. When my immediate range is clear, I turn to see how the others are doing. Garrus is right in sight, in the process of reloading his sniper rifle after taking out a Shadow down the hall. As he finishes, he turns just enough to see me looking at him and gives off a small smile. I almost smile back until I see one of the Shadows closing in behind him. Almost without thought, I snatch the arrow I used in the vents back from my quiver and start to aim. When Garrus moves similarly and starts aiming in my direction, I don't even pay attention. I just fire at the same time he does. The arrow goes right past him and hits the Shadow at about the same time the bullet flies by my ear, causing me to recoil with my hand pressed against my ringing skull and catch sight of the Shadow whose skull was _cracked_ by the shot. I only have time to exchange smirks with Garrus before the next wave comes in.

Looks like Kendrys is pulling all the stops now. I could say they're less like shadows and more like a hydra—we kill one and two more come back. _They must know where we're trying to go. They_ really _don't want us to get down there._ The next two Shadows come at me; I fire a bladed arrow into the first's chest then jump up and retrieve it to immediately drive it into the next's. That same arrow still gets put to use one more time when three more Shadows come at me in a line and I fire it over their shoulders; it moves so close that the tip cuts through their necks, severing the arteries. The arrow hits the wall at the same time all three hit the floor.

"SHOWOFF!" Ashley shouts over the gunfire. It takes a lot of restraint not to let my guard down just long enough to laugh.

That's when the last wave comes out. I know it's the last because it's the biggest. And we actually have trouble holding against it. I manage to keep them back for about a minute. Then they start to close in on me. I hold my bow up, prepared to fire. Only for one of the Shadows to jump at me. They move to strike, but I hold the bow in the way, catching the blow long enough for me to kick them back. They roll with it, though, and come back up to grab the bow entirely. I struggle with them for a second, not letting myself lose my hold on the arrow. I finally pull the bow free, sending the arrow flying. It goes off to the side, away from any foreseeable targets. Then the Shadow throws me back, forcing me to drop the bow to the floor.

At about the same time, the rest of the Shadows pin us down. We could take our chances trying to fight our way past them, but they have us outnumbered and, now, outmaneuvered. The squad is, obviously, waiting for me to signal our new strategy, since this, also obviously, was not part of the plan. Instead, I ignore them, sigh, and hold out my hands. But I can't keep myself from smirking.

"What's so funny?" the Shadow at the front growls.

I answer by pointing behind them.

Everyone in the room turns their gaze that direction and sees it. The concussive shot I "misfired" hit an explosive arrow planted on the edge of the platform.

The Shadow lowers their weapon. "Oh—"

Boom.

The initial explosion causes the platform to collapse in front of us. As the force of it throws me and the squad back, the Shadows pinning us down fall back and down three stories. If they survived that, the way the explosion then sets off a chain reaction with the rest of the explosive arrows I've been planting since we first breeched the stronghold ensures they stay down.

When the smoke clears, I find that I'm still on the central construct, along with the squad, but the walkways and platforms leading to the surrounding halls have collapsed. The only Shadows left are on the other side of the resulting hole, still in the hall across from us. They're all armed with ranged weapons, so they move to attack.

I quickly pull my pistol, holding it at the ready as the rest of the squad prepares to back me up. "You just saw what I can do with a bow. Do you really wanna see what I can do with a gun?!"

"The correct answer is 'no,'" EDI remarks.

The Shadows take a moment, exchanging looks…then all run back into the tunnels.

I smile as I put my gun away. "Good move." Then I slide my foot under the bowstring and kick it up, grabbing my bow back from midair.

Liara looks over the newly-formed chasm with a sigh. "Well, at least we have a clear path down now."

I just give her a smirk and then step over to slide down the broken walkway to the lower stronghold. I land easily on my feet and move aside to let the others follow. "Come on. Shouldn't be much farther to the operations center."

"You know, you just tore up the entire upper level," Tali points out as she comes down, "How are we supposed to get out of here?"

"Kendrys is psychotic, not stupid. She'll have an alternate route to the outside, one we could never have found from there. Just gotta deal with her then get to it and we can be on our merry way, hopefully never to hear the words 'Black' and 'Shadow' in the same sentence ever again." I turn to scan the hall we've wound up in. There are four clear paths onward, like there were in the upper level, one to the right and one to the left and so on. "…I don't suppose anyone has an idea which way to go."

EDI steps up and looks around. After a few seconds, she cocks her head and waits. "There are sounds of working technology and battle preparations coming from that direction." She points to the hall to the right.

"Works for me. Let's go." I move on to the hall, the others following close behind. We all keep our weapons at the ready. This is it. We're almost at the end. Kendrys and her lackeys are getting ready for us, so it won't be easy. But nothing ever is.

I don't know how I manage to keep my breathing steady. Or my hands for that matter. My bow is still at the ready, arrow in place though not drawn back, in position to aim and fire at a moment's notice. But when I feel an uncomfortable pressure on my sternum, I find my heart is pounding hard. I take a second to breathe deep, hoping to calm it, but it obviously doesn't do much good. I can't say why this would be getting my pulse to rise. I do stuff like this all the time. Even if you factor in how much Kendrys' place in this fight is considered unsettling for me, it's no worse than facing Harbinger and I held my ground then.

Then I feel Garrus come up beside me. He's still holding his gun at the ready, but when no one else is looking, he takes one hand away long enough to take hold of my wrist, my own hand still occupied, and gently slide it away. The silent gesture telling me he's still here for me at least gets my heart to calm down a little ways. I go with that feeling, recalling what I told him after his confession about my connection to the Reapers, what I felt with him in the med bay before Aephus. Nothing can change what's true: not even the Reapers could stop Shepard and Vakarian—Kendrys Falcon doesn't stand a chance.

Then I catch sight of a Shadow at the end of the hall. I quickly pull my bow up and fire. It takes out the Shadow before they even see us. But it also alerts every Shadow at that end of the tunnels to our position. Guess it's starting now.

As soon as the other Shadows come out, bullets (and arrows, naturally) start flying, forcing us all behind cover. Some of the Shadows move to get closer, but the biotics quickly take them down. While I'm aiming one arrow, a swordsman manages to get close, but I simply catch the blade with my bow and fire the arrow directly into them, prying it out as I kick them back so I can fire it a second time at a Shadow right behind them.

"Well," Wrex comments as I duck back down, "can't do that with a gun, I'll give you that."

I toss him a brief smile before firing the next arrow. We push forward as we keep fighting, eventually gaining ground. This time, the tactic of "follow the trail of people trying to kill us" actually does help, leading us straight to a turn. Down the hall from which lies the door to the operations center. I can tell because, even from here, I can hear Kendrys' voice giving the order to make sure we never reach that door just before the Shadows lock it shut and come to attempt killing us. Of course, they haven't been successful on that last count so far, so why should that change now?

Thankfully, the explosion left the previously exposed lower halls with some usable cover, so we're saved from a lot of otherwise dangerous attacks. One of Jack's shockwaves throws most of our assailants off their feet, giving us all clear shots. Half of the Shadows involved are left ready to attack and attempt to almost immediately. At my command, Liara and Miranda perform the same biotic combo attack they used on the Citadel—Liara starts a singularity and Miranda warps it into detonation. The few left standing become victims of Tali's drone or Grunt's shotgun-bearing charge. Seeing as Grunt's already working up a rage, Garrus fires a concussive shot at the door to soften it up and lets Grunt simply charge at it. I'll give this to them: it actually breaks the door, though not actually knocking it down.

"…well, alright then," I comment as I step over, "Jack? Care to do the honors?"

Jack smirks. "Gladly." Then she moves into position and fires a hard biotic strike at the door. That finishes what Grunt started and throws it out of our way.

The attack itself takes out two of the three Shadows standing guard on the other side, leaving only one standing. The Shadow quickly readies their gun…then drops it when a knife flies through their neck. The assassin takes exactly four seconds to scramble at the blade, all attempts to breathe making it cut deeper, before hitting the ground. They're beyond the help of medi-gel, but it'll likely take a whole minute for them to fully bleed out. That's brutality if ever there was any.

"I told you to keep them away from the door."

My hand clutching my bow even tighter, I look up at the source of the voice.

The operations center itself is about as big as the gathering hall they pinned me in almost an hour ago. There are Shadows all across the side walls, but at the back of the room, leaning against the wall of the alcove the computers rest in, is Kendrys Falcon herself. As if to make sure we don't doubt who threw that knife, she's turning another one over in her hand repeatedly, her gaze locked on the floor as her other arm rests against her midsection, fingers hanging over a belt loaded with as many knives as I have arrows. It's actually an unsettling sight.

"You're killing your own men now?" I find myself growling as I step into the room.

"Don't give me the whole morality spiel," Kendrys growls as she turns to look at us, her honey-like eyes sharp with hatred, her hand tight around her knife the second she stops twisting it between her fingers, "You've killed just as many people as I have. Different motives, different methods…same numbers."

"Well, thanks for making our jobs easier," Ashley comments snidely as she steps over the corpse.

Kendrys just scoffs. "Please. I've seen you all at work. That moron wouldn't have slowed you down more than two seconds. For that matter, you did kill the only competent operative I had."

I smirk, holding my bow at the ready. "Then you can do the math on your odds of ever leaving this room alive."

Kendrys laughs. "The great Commander Shepard bringing arrows to a gunfight?!"

I respond to that by aiming a concussive arrow through my peripheral vision and launching it right into one of said guns, causing it to go off and throw the Shadow carrying it back into the wall with enough force to snap their spine in half.

Kendrys watches this with a sigh. "…alright, that was fairly impressive…"

"Enough talk," Grunt growls, "Let's kill her already!"

At that assertion, Kendrys smirks violently. "Well, if it's a fight you're looking for, then welcome to the madhouse!"

That's apparently the signal. The Shadows instantly get ready to open fire. James quickly tosses a grenade into the center of the room. It doesn't actually hit any of them, but the explosion following faster than they expect draws their attention or throws off their aim, giving us time to get out of their line of fire and ready ourselves for a firefight. Cover is limited but there should still be enough for us to work with. Especially since Wrex and Grunt need absolutely none. Once we have a chance, we break it up again, scattering around the room to keep them from boxing us in and make sure we all have clear shots and maneuverability.

"Any suggestions, Shepard?" Miranda asks as we start to disperse.

"Don't let Kendrys get a clear shot at you unless you're absolutely certain you can hold it off," I tell everyone over the COMM as the fight truly breaks out around us, "She's deadly with those knives and I don't think our shields will hold them back."

"So what do we do about her?"

I cast a quick glance at the back of the room, where Kendrys is glaring at us as she watches her Shadows work and waits for her chance to jump in and show us all what she can do. "…leave her to me."

The Shadows are blocking my path to the back. I don't have time to fight my way through. Fast as I can, I draw my gun and start firing. When they notice my change in tactics, though, they start focusing fire on me. I get behind the nearest cover and wait for a chance to duck back out. If the Shadows get the slightest advantage, Kendrys will take the chance to come in and play her hand. If she gets too close to killing one of us, she'll be open to violent retribution from almost every single one of us. But if she manages to get that advantage and instead seizes it the way Orion did with Garrus when he had me cornered, she'll have the leverage she needs to put this fight to an end. If that happens, she wins absolutely, the way she planned from the start. I can't let that happen. I told Garrus this and I meant it: _she needs to die_.

That's when I hear a break in the fire. Now's my chance. I leap out of cover and shoot down every Shadow I see between me and my target. Once it's clear, I jump up at the last Shadow in my path, emptying my pistol on them, and leap off of them into Kendrys. I manage to take hold of her, throwing her into the alcove where the main console is. I barely damage either before she kicks against my leg and flips the hold, pushing my back to the wall. She starts to turn into position to take me down, but I simply push off the wall and throw my weight against her. It manages to make her let go, giving me the freedom to move back to a position from which I can definitely shoot her down. Right as I reach for my SMG, though, ready to use the last bullets it can fire on her, she pulls a knife and throws it right at me as she turns to face me again. I barely have time to jump out of the way before it flies past, hitting the wall behind where I was standing.

"Did you actually think you were faster than me?" Kendrys growls.

"Well," I snap back, "seeing as how I'm better than you in every other conceivable way, it stood to reason."

That effectively enrages her. She rushes in to attack. I block the initial strike and start to fire my gun, but she knocks it out of my hand half a second before I pull the trigger. When I attempt to pin her down and fire an arrow into her instead, she counters every move I make and ends up putting me in a stranglehold with my own bow. "You should know when to back off! You're only better because of what _I_ did!"

"If you're looking for a 'thank you,' you're gonna have to dig deeper!" I choke out before pushing off enough to throw my head back against her. As she recoils, grabbing her unfortunately-not-broken nose, I duck out of her hold and turn to grab my bow back. She quickly repositions, wrapping her arms around the string. We spend the next minute attempting to throw each other off to no avail.

Until she throws her head against mine, pushing me back. I keep my hold on my bow when she lets go, but this just leaves her an opening to kick me. I just barely react in time, rolling out of the way. "'Thank you'? Nah. Your boyfriend killed mine, I just wanna make it even."

I can't keep up this melee. She can match me like this. But I'm running out of options. My pistol is out of ammo, my SMG is out of reach, and I'm not in any position to go ducking into the mayhem to retrieve either the gun or a spare clip. I'll have to finish this with my bow, like I planned. Only problem? My arrows are more limited than bullets ever were. I'm already starting to run out.

"Don't tell me you're on your last leg already, Shepard," Kendrys sneers, twisting a knife in her hand again as she closes in on me, "I could do this all day." Then she throws the knife my way.

I move fast, catching it this time like I caught the one in the entrance hall. Before I can throw it back, though, she jumps at me. I duck under the attack itself and, as I come back up, hold the knife to strike back. Before I can even bring it to her flesh, she grabs my wrist, squeezing until I drop the knife entirely. Instead of twisting, thankfully, she retrieves the knife from midair and attempts to drive it into me. That move leaves an opening for me to stomp down on her foot. She recoils just enough for me to kick her in the gut. The impact doesn't hit hard enough for her to lose her footing, but the concussive arrow I fire her way ( _my last one_ ) does.

While Kendrys hits the floor, I take the chance to scan the battlefield. The Shadows are starting to wear us down. I have to do something. Almost frantically, I search my quiver. I have one last sonic arrow. I might be able to get some use out of it. But I can't be sure the Shadows will still react to it the way they did in the main hall of the upper tunnels—second time never hits as hard as the first, after all.

Then I see another arrow packed in my quiver and notice the old-fashioned electric lighting on the ceiling. Now I have an actual plan. "Might wanna get ready, people," I give the warning into my COMM as discreetly as I can, "It's about to get real loud and very bright in here."

No sooner have I given the warning than Kendrys comes back to her feet, pulling out a knife as she sneers at me so violently that someone with a weaker constitution might drop dead from the sight of it. She has me cornered. If I'm gonna make a move, I need to do it now. For a split second, I glance over at my squad-mates to confirm they got my message. They did. They're preparing for a high-powered flashbang. Which is exactly what I'm gonna give them. So when Kendrys moves to attack, I roll out of the way, pulling out both arrows and firing them together. The sonic arrow hits the ceiling as the electric arrow pierces the wiring for the lights. The resulting current causes every light in the room to overload, producing a blindingly bright cascade of light, which sets off the sonic arrow instantly, foregoing the five-second warning count and immediately releasing the deafening shockwave. My squad and I are ready for it and close ourselves off from the effects at the point of detonation. The Shadows, on the other hand, take the hit head-on. Kendrys and her underlings are left blinded and off-balance. Easy targets.

While the squad starts to regain the upper hand with the Shadows themselves, I move in and deliver a hard, fast strike to Kendrys before she can recover. She catches herself when she hits the floor, but that just gives me the chance to grab her by the hair and slam her head into the ground. Before I can keep it up, though, she reaches around and digs her nails into my arm. The move itself isn't enough to make me let go, but it makes me flinch enough to give her room to turn over. Once she's facing me, she twists around to kick me in the leg. _That_ makes me let go. Which gives her an opportunity to punch me in the stomach. I stumble back long enough for her to get back on her feet and shake off the damage from the last two minutes.

This is going nowhere fast.

Thankfully, the squad makes their moves then. Liara and Miranda perform their biotic double-up again, one of James' grenades is set off by a concussive shot from Garrus, and Tali's drone goes off to make room for Wrex. The three explosions occurring in sequence reliably draws Kendrys' attention for at least one second. One second in which I fire the last poison arrow I had the nerve to bring along. She catches it, but the catch sets it off, releasing the poison aerially. It's not as damaging that way, especially not to someone who's pretty much acquainted with every poison in the galaxy. She'll recover fast and her counterstrike will be hard to take. But if I move now, I can end this for good. I start to reach for an arrow to make the final attack.

Something hits me first. I keep myself from crying out when the attack hits—when the Reaper signal reaches my brain—but I still end up taking a step back and grabbing my skull. The pain recedes almost instantaneously, like usual. But the split second it takes me to get back in the game is met with a sharp kick to the head. I fall back against the floor, dropping my bow as my senses start swimming.

"Talk about rotten timing!" Kendrys actually starts laughing, "Never let your guard down, not even for a second; don't let your opponent see your weakness. Didn't the Alliance teach you that one?"

The moment I'm in a position to get moving again, I reach to grab my bow and counter her attack.

I never get the chance. She presses her boot down into my stomach, forcing me to clench up in pain. Even when I work up the nerve to try again, finding my hand is less than an inch too far away from the bow to grab it back, she keeps up the pressure, delighting in my pain-filled reaction. "You wanna know why I always get my target?" she asks, kneeling down to get closer with every word, "Two reasons. 1: everyone wants to suffer, just in different ways. 2: everyone in this twisted galaxy has a death wish; the only difference is how deeply they bury it. …how deep I have to go to find it." She then reaches into her belt and pulls out one of the knives. "So, tell me, Shepard, how deep is yours? Oh. Sorry. Wrong question. …how deep…is _his_?"

The bow suddenly the last thing on my mind, I find myself bursting with panic. With Shadows keeping us occupied at every turn and the threat of them holding my attention, I never got the chance to warn Garrus that he's the real target. _He doesn't know this knife isn't meant for me._ I turn as much as I can to search the crowd around us. Kendrys has us in the perfect position to make sure Garrus is the only one that can both see me trapped here and do something about it. I have about three seconds before he clears the line of fire between us to give himself a shot at her, not knowing that what he's really doing is giving her a shot at him.

Like most days, I find an answer in my arsenal. I have one final explosive arrow left after my destruction of the upper tunnels. Before Kendrys can stop me, I snatch it from my quiver, drive it into the ground beside her, and squeeze the shaft as I twist it, setting it off. The explosion goes off at the exact second I pull my hand back, causing the floor beneath us to give way. Kendrys falls through immediately and I only have time to grab my bow back before I follow her.

As many times as I've fallen, I've gotten used to tumbles in the field or graceful landings on the streets. But this one is too hard too fast. I land painfully on my right side. The fall wasn't high enough for me to break anything, but it's still hard to bring myself back to my feet. As I do, I regain my bearings. We're in the lowest portion of the tunnels, deeper than the Shadows ever reached. What arrows I had left are still in my quiver and my bow is intact. Unfortunately, Kendrys is also in one piece with all her knives in place. And she's not happy.

"You think you're so smart," Kendrys growls, "You gave him five more minutes. And believe me, the second I've got my hands on you, he'll be begging for what I'm going to do to him."

 _That does it!_ I pull out one of my last two incendiary arrows and fire right at her. She catches it again, but the fire that breaks from it makes her cry out and drop it, clutching her burning hand. The pain from the fall is suddenly the last thing on my mind. Adrenaline's taking over. I rush up to jump her, ready to drive my last available incendiary arrow straight into a lung. She counters, rolling out of my path and throwing me into the wall. I move as fast as I can, turning to take hold of her arms and then reaching up to kick her in the sternum. As she catches herself in her stumble back, she pulls out a knife and turns it to where she can put it to good use. I duck down, grabbing her arm as I come back up and then taking her by the neck so I can pull her down to knee her in the nose. She drops the knife, giving me a chance to pull the last incendiary arrow out of my quiver.

Right as the arrow comes her way, she grabs my arm and squeezes. The pain that follows is significantly more substantial than it should be. She must've seen where I hit the floor when I fell; she's putting pressure on the exact point I hit the hardest. That's when she really hits hard. When she notices I'm choking back my cry of pain never to release it, she pushes me back. I'm too busy coddling the injury she left behind to notice when she punches me in the torso with all the strength she has. I feel something give way when the blow makes contact. I would be in the process of recovery, readying to hit back, but she doesn't give me the chance. She picks up the arrow I dropped and tosses it at me. My only available method to duck out of the way forces me to turn my right leg, showing that it was hurt the way my arm was when I dropped in. If I keep up like this, she'll win for sure. I have to do something. Without thinking, I reach up to grab another arrow to fire. The second my hand goes up, though, something hits it, throwing me back against one of the posts holding the tunnels up. I hit my head against the post, unfortunately in the same place she kicked me earlier, so it takes a moment for my senses to clear enough for me to realize that my right wrist is tied to the post by some kind of wire.

Kendrys sighs as she retrieves her dropped knife, giving me a moment to attempt (and fail miserably) pulling myself free. "You know, I heard Killian's master plan. Would've worked from the start if not for the way you died. Reaper signal shorted out the control chip, using Reaper tech as our plan B instead of good old-fashioned mental torture made you immune to indoctrination—that was just poor planning, lack of foresight, only relevant in retrospect. The Orpheus Protocol, though? I'll admit, I thought it was crazy, but I know enough about psychology to classify that particular brand as 'so crazy it just might work.' But no. Your little friends are just too resourceful. They held on just long enough for you to go over the other end. They were always meant to bring you back. They just brought back the wrong side of you." She smirks viciously. "Now…if I tried it for myself…do you think it would work this time?"

That makes me come back to my senses entirely. When she throws the knife at me, I turn away from it, ducking down as I do. The knife that would've gone through my hand (or my ear—still not seeing straight enough to tell) instead cuts through the wire. Once I'm free to move, I pull my bow up and—

Suddenly, every nerve in my abdomen cries out, and I feel a thick, hot liquid leaking onto my side. Kendrys is pressed against me, golden brown eyes leering at me. I finally force her back to see what the problem is and find her holding a knife in one hand. One look down and I see why it's covered in dark red blood. A wound in my side, just below the ribs.

Funny. It's the same place Garrus got shot protecting me from Orion.

"Don't worry," Kendrys comments, "It's not poisoned or anything. No, I want you to be wide awake when your friends all go down. And when you and your turian are the last ones standing, then you can die. Well, after I'm convinced you've both suffered enough."

I turn my gaze up from the wound to her. If those words weren't enough to bring back my desire to kill her, just looking at her cements it. I don't even bother attempting to find a strategy this time. I just rush up to attack her.

She sidesteps me at the last second, sweeping my legs out from under me. I don't know how I manage to think fast enough to catch myself with my left hand, but I do.

Then I feel one final strike hit me in my lower back and my whole spine cries out in response. That time, I can't will myself to hold back my cry of pain fast enough and a sharp scream comes free from my throat, only silenced when my arm gives out and I hit the floor.

"Come on," Kendrys' voice penetrates my pain-ridden senses, "As much as I did for you, you didn't think I'd augment my own strength, too? It's come in handy plenty of times on contracts, but this, beating the great Commander Shepard at her own game—this is just too good to be true." She sighs. "Still, don't sell yourself short, Sara. You never really had a chance."

My heart starts pounding harder there. Not because of the pain tearing through me. Not because of the pressure I feel when her boot goes into position to press down on the wound she left in my spine, undoubtedly moving to paralyze me and ensure her revenge comes. Not even because of the sadistic laugh she gives off as she does it.

She called me by my first name. Only Garrus gets to do that.

I have two seconds to make a move. I do the same thing that got me free when Irana had me cornered. One quick command through my omni-tool and Kendrys' shields go off, throwing her off of me. That gives me enough time to get back on my feet… "You never had one either." …and push her forward.

There's a sublevel here—half of the floor is one meter lower than the rest. Kendrys falls right down there. She's a perfect target like this, but I doubt this chance will last. I pick up my bow, holding it at the ready, and reach over to my quiver for something— _anything_ —to use on her. All I come up with is a metallic shaft with white fletching.

This is my last arrow. I have to make it count.

Kendrys notices what I'm about to do. She doesn't try to jump back up to the main level and keep the arrow from coming. She doesn't try to get out of my range. She just stands there. Smirking. "Go ahead. Do it."

When I nock the arrow and pull it back, I know why she's egging me on. I can't stand straight. My right arm is shaking. My sight is still uneven. She's less than five meters from me and I still can't make the shot. The second I try, I'll lose my last defense. She'll win. _I can't let that happen. I can't. …I have to find another target._

"What are you waiting for?" she scoffs, "I'm right here."

I search the area as fast as I can. It's a cryo arrow. Surely, I can use that somehow. _Come on. Please! There has to be SOMETHING!_

"Just what I thought. Killian was wrong about you, wasn't he? You're nothing but a _street rat_."

I keep my aim on her…and then shift it slightly and fire.

Kendrys watches in amusement as the arrow flies past her. "You missed."

I just smirk. "Famous last words."

She catches on then. She knows I switched targets. She quickly turns to see what I really shot for. The cryo arrow is freezing the wall, weakening it in the process. As it starts to give way, Kendrys learns why her half of the tunnel is lower than mine: this used to be a water main. The wall finally bursts open, letting a cascade of water come through. It hits Kendrys head-on, throwing her down as the sublevel fills. She finally comes back up to the surface, but she's not about to swim out. She's right where I want her.

I limp up to the edge of the level. And I fire up my omni-tool. "Lights out." Then I purposely short-circuit it and send the electric discharge surging through the water.

Kendrys cries out as the electricity takes hold of her. In my current condition, I can't truly savor it. But I do still delight in that moment when her cries are silenced as the charge shuts down her heart. Then I pull myself up, turning off my omni-tool entirely, and step back from the water before the charge can reach me. That's when I look up. Ten seconds ago, the biggest threat to my regained life was in that water. Now there's just an empty shell.

I don't know how long I'm standing here weakly, my attention locked on the electrocuted corpse, before I hear a particularly loud gunshot go off. I turn to look curiously at its origin. I find that it was resounding from the tunnels overhead, through the hole my entrance left behind, marking the end of the squad's fight with the Shadows. If I have any doubts who won, they're all silenced immediately when someone jumps down the hole to this level.

Garrus lands much better than I did. He instantly sees me standing here. There might be some relief that I won, but it's far overshadowed by the panic setting in from how broken down the fight itself left me. "Sara!" He rushes up to me.

For some reason I can't fathom, I smile. "…told you I'd kill her." No sooner have I said it than my legs go out, causing me to drop into his arms.

"Sara?" he quickly starts looking me over, making sure none of my wounds are fatal (they aren't, Kendrys wouldn't take a chance of killing me before she was certain I'd suffered— _And we thought Orion was a sadistic psychopath…_ ), "Are you OK?"

"I'll live," I answer as I attempt to turn into him without curling up and putting pressure on my spinal cord. When I don't meet with any success, I figure I need to find a distraction. From the look Garrus is giving me, I'd say we could both use one. I turn my gaze back towards the broken wall and find myself smirking at it. "Got us a way out."

He lets off a small laugh. "Yeah, you did."

Then my gaze drifts to the hole between this level and the Shadows' operations center. No one else is coming through it. "Is everyone…?"

"All the Shadows are down, no casualties on our side. A few injuries, like after Omega, but nothing that can't be patched up."

I breathe a sigh of relief, turning to lay my head against his shoulder as I close my eyes.

"Sara, no, stay with me," he instantly pleads.

"I'm not dying," I argue without even opening my eyes, "I'm just tired."

He understands that much. But he still sighs as he brushes my hair away from my face. "You can rest later, alright? Let's get out of here first."

I just let off a small moan in answer, all but curling up against him. He's right, I shouldn't be trying to go to sleep until we know my injuries aren't serious. But it's kind of hard not to be tempted with him here.

After a minute, the rest of the squad finally comes down. I take a minute to ensure them I'm not about to die or anything ("Just a flesh wound. …OK, I guess that one would make more sense to Joker.") before telling them we need to find a way across to the broken wall to find a path out. Samara easily uses her biotics and the remains of the floor I tore up to form a bridge over the sparking water, letting us head out. As Garrus lifts me up and starts to lead us out of the tunnels and back to the surface to meet the _Normandy_ , I cast one final glance over at the pool of water now below our feet, still holding the remnants of two kinds of current and the electrocuted remains of Kendrys Falcon. Even as it passes out of view, the same thought rings through my mind unendingly.

…it's all over. It's really, finally over.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24 – Garrus

I've been sitting at the edge of a bed in the med bay for I-don't-even-know-how-many hours. Shepard lies in the bed in front of me, somewhere between asleep and unconscious. I haven't moved much since I first sat down here, after Chakwas finished tending to her. Three bruised ribs, minor fractures in her skull and right leg and arm, stab wound in her left side just shy of any vital organs. Worst of all, she took a hit to the spine, though it's thankfully not severed. Once Chakwas gave me the all-clear, I took my place beside her and just watched her sleep. I've watched the subtle rise and fall of her breathing, slower than normal beneath the bandages, only moving to occasionally run a finger through her hair or place my hand over hers.

 _Spirits, even like this she's beautiful._

I think back to how this happened. How I found a break in the fight and turned to find Kendrys pinning down Shepard. How she detonated her last explosive arrow before I could make a move, dropping them both into the lowest tunnels. How that left me desperate, fighting harder than usual just to get down to her. I didn't get a chance until the fight was finally over and by then hers was done, too. But we won. The tunnel the broken-down wall led to really did give us a path back to the surface, so our only issue was helping our injured commander through it and making sure she didn't fall asleep on the way there and risk slipping into a coma. So she leaned on each of us (switching partners constantly to stay the least bit mobile) instead of letting someone carry her and told us what happened. About how I was Kendrys' real target because I was the one who killed Orion ("Really?" Ashley had remarked, "We'd always assumed it was Shepard, since, you know, he had an arrow in his lung and all."), about how she'd finally taken Kendrys out for good, even about the hits she took to get there. It wasn't any easier to hear about it than it was to see the aftermath, but at least it kept her conscious until we got her to the med bay. And even then, I couldn't bring myself to leave her side.

 _Come on, Shepard, you have to pull through this. …I don't know if I could survive losing you this time._

I breathe deep, turning my eyes from her face. They only fall to her midsection again, her hands resting over it as it rhythmically rises and falls. I'm not even thinking when I move, but my hand finds its way over to her, pressing itself to her sternum to feel the steady thumping of her heart. This is the calmest I've felt it beating in a long time. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think I've never felt it pounding this light and slow. That could be attributed to the well-deserved sleep that last fight left her in, but there's more to it. I know her. I know she hasn't really felt at peace once in her whole life. Even when she was dead. She deserves so much more than that.

 _I'm right here with you. And I'm never leaving your side again._

Suddenly, she starts to shift positions, almost as if she heard me. Her eyes slowly come open. At first, they seem glassy and distant. Then the bright green spheres find their way up to me and they light up entirely, joined by a soft smile that makes me seem to come alive after hours of silence. "Hey."

I smile back. "Hey."

She sighs, letting her eyes close again as she leans into the pillow. "How long was I out?"

"About five minutes longer than I've been sitting here."

She opens one eye to give me a look. "And how long have you been sitting here?"

"Not a clue. I was too distracted to keep count."

 _"Four hours, 15 minutes, and 26.3 seconds," EDI chimes in._

I just barely keep myself from glaring at the ceiling again. "Yes. Thank you, EDI."

Shepard groans, turning onto her side to face me completely. "Just four? I think I need another twelve."

"No arguments," I tell her, "You've been through a lot."

"Since the day I was born."

I give her a look of sympathy before reaching over to take her hand. She gladly returns the hold, not moving otherwise. "Go ahead and get some rest. And if you need anything, just ask me."

I almost think I see that mischievous spark in her eyes again. I can almost hear her saying something like "Anything, huh?" and my own thoughts ringing with _What'd I just get myself into?_ Instead, she clutches my hand tighter, smiling gleefully. "Alright. …come here."

I gladly kneel down beside her, reflecting the joyful smile until the very second she takes hold of me and pulls me up against her. Even though she's too weak to take this very far, she doesn't ease her grip on me at any point, as if she's worried I'm even capable of letting go of her when we're pressed together like this. The hand not tight in hers reaches up to her hair, careful to stay away from where she took those hits to the skull, and gently presses to bring her closer. She doesn't fight me off, so I stay like that, falling into the feeling of her hair between my fingers, of her hand clutching mine lovingly, of how she kisses me as long as she's able to and even when she pulls back stays as close as she can get.

My senses are so caught up in her that I don't hear the door opening, so I don't know there's anyone there until an uncomfortable "Ahem!" sounds from the front of the med bay. I hesitantly pull back from the embrace with Shepard, though she doesn't let me go far even when she turns over just enough to see who's there.

Liara is standing by the door. "I'm sorry, but I found something I thought you should hear."

Shepard still doesn't let go of me or even respond other than offering a simple nod as if to say "Go ahead."

Liara steps over. When she notices that Shepard isn't about to let me change positions or do so herself, she sits down on the bed beside us, where I'd been before Shepard woke up. Then she turns on her omni-tool and sifts through the data to what she came to inform us of: "I was going through the data we took from Kendrys' network. I found the Shadows' registry and went through it, like you suggested, and found that only a handful of operatives remain. One of them is the final of Orion's lieutenants, a salarian named Jethran Tallus. I thought the name sounded familiar, so I cross-referenced with my own database. He's one of the Shadow Broker operatives, likely the mole who collected the intel on the _Normandy_ and all of us for Orion. It seems that he was hesitant to comply with the Orpheus Protocol and quit the Shadows' employ entirely when Kendrys took over—he was apparently the deciding vote when they elected to excommunicate her and was quite adamant about the decision. When I confronted him about this, he confirmed it was all true and that he was never involved with the Falcon. He's willing to keep his allegiance with me instead. Well, with the Shadow Broker, at least."

Shepard seems pleasantly surprised by this news. "Maybe it's the meds talking, but I'd say that's a fair deal."

"Allow me to be your voice of reason when I say it sounds like one to me," I agree. It certainly sounds suspicious, especially that he would openly confess it all to Liara, but crazier things have happened. And if anyone can handle what one salarian can deal, Liara can. Now that she knows who to watch, it wouldn't be that difficult. Besides, we don't actually need to trust him. We just need to trust the Broker.

Liara gives a nod of agreement. "I'll keep him in my network then. And discreetly have one of my other informants keep an eye on him. The Shadows should never be a problem again." With that, she gets up and prepares to leave the room. "Feel better, Shepard."

Shepard smirks back, laying her head on my shoulder as her arms stay wrapped around me. "Believe me, I will."

Liara simply grants her a smile of approval and steps out.

As she leaves, what she said really sinks in. Killian Orion is dead. Kendrys Falcon is dead. Irana Zeranos is dead. The asari lieutenant ( _Shame we never learned her name,_ I almost consider sarcastically) is dead. Jethran Tallus has gone turncoat for Liara. What's left of the Shadows is as scattered as the remains of Cerberus. Shepard's finally finished our dealings with the Reapers.

With a sigh, Shepard sees what I do: "…it's over."

I can't deny I'm relieved to know that. But with Shepard not her usual playful self, I step back into the role of my typical snarky self instead: "Don't worry," I smirk, "I'm sure you'll get us into some kind of trouble sooner or later."

She laughs briefly. "Well, after everything we've survived, I'm not letting us die of boredom now."

I laugh back, taking in the sight of her smile until she lays her head against mine. I close my eyes to take in the sensation for as long as I possibly can. Everything feels right when she touches me. Having her here means more to me than anything. Of course, when she turns to lay her head on my shoulder, I get the feeling she's about to fall asleep again, and it's probably not a good idea for her to be in this position for that long. So I carefully lead her to pull back. "You really should be resting." She seems a little upset at the reminder but consents to lie back down. As long as I keep hold of her hand and don't take my eyes off hers.

Shepard then looks out the viewing glass, across the mess hall to the XO office to which Liara has already retreated. "…we're that couple now, aren't we?"

I look at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

"The kind that's so happy together they make everyone else around them completely uncomfortable."

At that, I start laughing. "I'm actually OK with that."

"I didn't say I wasn't, love," Shepard smiles, leaning into her pillow wearily.

I simply smile back, carefully brushing her light red hair away from her bright green eyes. "I can never be any less when I'm with you, _kalwen_." She smirks softly at the use of the word. Knowing what it means, she never gets tired of hearing it. But the sight of this reaction draws out something I've been holding back for far too long. I need to say this now. "I don't know what's going to happen now. But I know that I can't live without you anymore. I don't just love you. I need you. And I want to be with you every second from here on out. No matter what it takes."

For a moment, she simply gives me that same light smile she always gives when I tell her how much she means to me. Suddenly, though, her smile fades to sheer astonishment as she realizes what I really mean and brings herself slightly upright to better meet my gaze. "…are you asking me to marry you?"

Those words strike me. I knew what I had intended, but I'd never actually given the thought to words like that. But hearing it only makes me certain of it. "…yeah. I guess I am."

She smiles… "No."

…I have never been in shock until now. "'No'?!"

"Ask me again when I'm not hopped up on medi-gel and painkillers," she sighs, falling back against the bed.

 _Oh. Right. Forgot about that._ I finally let myself give off a small laugh. "Alright. I can wait."

She smiles as she turns onto her side again. "Good." She keeps her eyes on mine for a moment longer before letting her eyes drift shut, breathing deep as she buries herself against the pillow.

I never once take my eyes off of her. My hand reaches up to her face, one talon softly pushing her hair away from her eyes. She smiles brightly again when she feels me touch her, and that makes me smile in return. But she needs to rest, so I start to my feet to head back to the battery and give her space to heal—

Before I can move, she grabs my arm as tight as she possibly can. "I didn't say you could leave, Vakarian."

It takes me about three seconds to realize why she needs me to stay. I finally crawl into the bed beside her and wrap my arms around her, letting her lean against me. "Anything to help you sleep better."

But she doesn't cling to me the way she did before. She simply leads me to hold her close. "…the nightmares are gone. I just need you here."

The nightmares are gone. _The nightmares are gone_. It really is finally over. My Sara is back. The thought fills me with so much absolute joy that I find myself holding her tight and just barely restrain myself from holding so tightly that I could aggravate her injuries. Still, she returns it just as jubilantly if a bit weaker.

This moment is perfect. All that exists is this embrace with her, each of us clinging to the other. Every breath I take brings her scent into my lungs. When she does move, it's to press her hand against my heart and feel the steady beat, a gesture I reciprocate without conscious thought.

"It's funny," Shepard whispers to me, her voice joining her heartbeat to fill the silence fallen over us, "Before we went back to Earth, the day the war ended…you said 'it's time we brought you home.'" She nestles herself against me so that I feel it when she smiles softly. "…I was on the _Normandy_ …I was with you…I already was home."

… _I am, too._ I belong here at her side. I always did. Every moment in my life led me straight to her and she always came back to me when something separated us. Don't humans have a saying about that?

She leans back enough to reach around and kiss my scars one more time before lying back down. Even when she does, she whispers to me again: "I love you, Garrus."

For a second, I let the moment fade slowly, every beat of her heart ringing with her voice saying the words I had hoped to hear before I ever knew what I really felt for her. When the moment is gone, I let my hand move from her heart to her face, gently bringing her to where I can kiss her again. "I love you, Sara."

She presses her hand against mine, taking hold of it so she can place both into the space between our hearts. Then she nestles against me again and her heartbeat gradually slows down. And just like always, mine follows her.

…

No call from EDI or jolt of the ship wakes us up this time. And when I wake up, Shepard is in the exact same position I left her in—nestled against me with one hand tightly clutching mine against her heart. She hasn't moved at all. That could be blamed on the meds, but I choose to take it as proof of her claim: the nightmares are finally gone. I find myself smiling at the realization as I dare to hold her the slightest bit closer. _She's really come back to me. And I never have to worry about losing her again._

Then the med bay door opens. I glance up and find EDI there. There's not a doubt in my mind she was standing outside the door for some time waiting for one of us to wake up.

Careful not to do anything that could disturb Shepard (which, unfortunately, includes moving too much), I signal for her to come closer. "What is it, EDI? Something you couldn't say over the COMM?"

"The PA system merely transmits audio messages," EDI answers, following my lead and keeping her voice down, "I had to transmit physical property." Then she holds out the property in question.

I quickly—and carefully—pull out the hand not tight in Shepard's grasp and take it from her. "Thank you."

She simply offers a small smile and a brief nod of acknowledgement before stepping back out of the room.

Once she's left, I look down at it. The star I got Shepard that day during the war, the one she gave back to me as a promise that we would both live through this, the one I had EDI seal to a band of Earth metal knowing what I would do with it the second Shepard—

Then I hear her. —woke up. I look back and find her slowly opening her eyes and, at the sight of me, smiling. "Still here?"

I smile back as I give her hand a light squeeze. "Wouldn't dream of letting you wake up alone."

She smiles brighter for a second before forcing herself to sit up. Though she still doesn't let go of my hand.

"Are you back yet?"

She forces herself to let go then, stretching her hand out as she tests her injuries to see how they're healing. Once she's confirmed that the healing process is on track and the meds have worn off, she sighs and nods. "Yeah."

I simply keep my eyes on her in anticipation. I don't need to say it. She knows what I'm asking.

When she sees the look I'm giving her, she confirms my suspicions. Her smile is so bright I feel my heart light up. "…yes. The answer is yes."

I don't have the words to describe the absolute joy that ignites inside me at those words. Apparently, the smile I give her reflects that, because I see her smile even stronger in response. I'm dying to grab her and bring her in to kiss her, but instead I open my hand, giving her the ring made of Palaven rock and Earth metal.

She laughs gleefully as she takes it. "You've been planning this, haven't you?"

"Yes, I wanted you to wind up in the med bay half-conscious so I could ask you to marry me while you were, and I quote, 'hopped up on medi-gel and painkillers.'"

"You know what I mean," she gives me a look even as she slides the ring onto her right hand.

I simply take hold of that hand, the familiar— _natural_ , by now—feeling altered by the presence of the metal ring. "A few days, yeah. Like I said, I'm not planning to ever leave your side again. So I just figured 'why not?'"

She lets a small smile come back through, her eyes glistening as she does. "No reason I can think of." She then glances down at the ring for a second. "Though I'm having trouble picturing the wedding."

…oh. "Yeah…didn't exactly think about that."

She smirks as she puts her hand down. "Well, we've got all the time in the world to worry about that now. …besides, worst case scenario, we can always elope."

"And _I'm_ having trouble picturing _that_."

"Fair enough."

For a moment, I look her over, as if I'm not planning to see her every single day for the rest of my life. But now that the rest of our lives is starting, I can't hide that some worries are creeping in. If only because I'm pretty certain no other turians and humans have ever crossed this line before. "Look, Sara," I find myself saying, "I'd understand if you think that…you know, maybe we weren't meant to…"

Once again, she ceases my worries by pressing her hand to my scars. Her eyes lock onto mine, green gently brightening as a soft smile takes hold. Her left hand unmoving, her right reaches down to my left and brings it into her reach. Her eyes turn from mine then. When I turn to follow her gaze, I see why: she's turning off my translator. For the first two seconds after it's disabled, she simply meets my eyes again, no need for words at all. Then she presses herself against me and whispers into my ear. In all she says, all I understand is the sound of her voice, but something to the musical flow of unfamiliar words makes my breath catch. I wrap one arm around her to hold her here, as close to me as she can get, and close my eyes until she stops talking.

As she pulls back to meet my eyes again, she takes a moment to smile before turning my translator back on for me.

I watch her do it. Her foreign message still rings through my mind, though the words themselves fade from my memory the more I find myself incapable of translating them myself. As much as I'd like to just keep to the memory of her voice in her own language, pure and unfiltered, I can't contain my curiosity: "What did you say?"

She answers by pressing herself against me again, this time to kiss me. I return it purely out of reflex, holding her in place as I do so. After about five seconds, she pulls back enough to simply lean against me instead. "I said 'I love you with all that my heart can give. I'll never let anything separate us ever again.'"

Wow. She really is a romantic. No wonder she's so into the mythical stuff. Of course, when the thought strikes me, I shake my head. "As much as I love it when you do stuff like that, you've gotta stop—you know I can't top it."

She laughs. "Alright, how's this? As soon as I'm medically able to again, I'm going to kiss you unconscious."

I laugh back. "Much better."

Her laughter increases, light and mirthful. _That_ I can fully commit to memory. After a second, though, she sighs. "You know, we're gonna have to tell the crew about this."

"Not to mention my dad and Solana." After what we've been through, my dad was a bit more forthcoming with the idea of me hanging around a human Spectre. I still expected a stronger reaction to the news that I was dating her, but that went surprisingly well, too. I sincerely doubt the fact that I'm planning to _marry_ her is going to go over as well.

Shepard seems to follow my thoughts, because she takes a while to respond. "…OK, you win that one."

I just give her a brief glance of amusement before taking her hands in mine. "Don't worry. Nothing's changing my mind."

She answers that by sliding her hands away from mine to wrap them around me. "I wasn't going to. Nothing's changing mine either."

I lose the will to move again, blue eyes locked with green. _We're really doing this._ I wrap my arms around her the way she has hers around me, carefully avoiding the bandages and instead focusing on the feeling of her heartbeat again. The thought of spending a single day without that feeling coursing through my hands is beyond unacceptable. "…never let me go again?" I ask her as I lean my head against hers.

She grants me one last smile before laying her head down on my shoulder. "Never."

I lose myself in the embrace again. For the life of me, I couldn't tell anyone how long we're like this before Chakwas comes in to check on the injured Commander. When she's done tending to her and confirms that she will be back to normal within the next week, she also informs us that the squad is preparing to go their separate ways again. Guess I can't blame them. They have lives outside of fighting assassins with us and, unlike last time, Shepard's current state of health isn't anything for them to stay back for and no injuries of their own are severe enough to warrant ongoing observation. Since Sara's spinal injury won't let her even stand up, though, they all have to come to the med bay to say their goodbyes before heading out and promising to stay in contact.

Only downside to that is that we end up telling them about our newly-made plans in the med bay while Sara is, like I mentioned, too injured to stand, but considering I actually made the proposal under the same circumstances, I guess there's no point in complaining.

About three hours after that, Wrex and Grunt have headed out for the first passage to Tuchanka, Jacob is headed back to his family, Miranda is headed back to Oriana, Jack is headed back to her biotic students, and Samara is…actually, she neglected to mention where she was going, though I'm fairly certain we'll be seeing her again before long. EDI, Joker, Liara, James, and Ash simply head back to their stations on the ship itself. Tali, however, calls Rannoch for a direct transport instead of simply leaving the ship with the others to find passage at the nearest spaceport; she gives some transparent excuse about security and infection possibilities, but I think we all know she just wants to stay on her home-ship for a few hours longer.

I stay at Shepard's side all day. She certainly doesn't seem to mind. When she finally forces herself to endure the next dose of the painkillers (about the time her attempts to argue with Chakwas not to keep up the meds is met with a surge of pain through her spine, bringing me to glare her into going along with it) and falls back on the bed, she moves to one side of it without question. I respond in kind, lying down beside her and wrapping my arms around her one more time. She nestles herself against me again and silently drifts into sleep.

And I stay with her through the night.

 **THE END…?**

Shoot. I was really hoping this one wouldn't end up being longer than the first story, but, obviously, that didn't happen. :/ Oh, well. It still turned out OK.

So, just like last time, I will be doing a two-part epilogue for this and I will be posting it separately. Unlike last time, I don't have it mostly finished at the time I'm putting up this chapter, so I don't know when I'll have it done and ready to go online. I will DEFINITELY try to get it up within the next few weeks, but it probably won't be next Saturday like it was for the first one. But it's coming, and I hope you enjoy it. I also hope you enjoyed this one. Please review and thanks for reading!


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